Eddy Flerackers

FluidPaint: an interactive digital painting system using real wet brushes

This paper presents FluidPaint, a novel digital paint system using real wet brushes. A new interactive canvas, accurately registering brush footprints and paint strokes in high precision has been developed. It is based on the real-time imaging of brushes and other painting instruments as well as the real-time co-located rendering of the painting results. This new painting user interface enhances the user experience and the artists expressiveness. User tests demonstrate the intuitive nature of FluidPaint, naturally integrating interface elements of traditional painting in a digital paint system.

A hybrid 2D/3D user interface for immersive object modeling

Virtual environments and other applications of computer-generated scenes are emerging. This increases the demand for tools for efficient creation of the virtual worlds and interaction with the components in the virtual world. Introduction of immersiveness in the modeling process seems promising, but a number of issues related to immersive modeling still have to be investigated. The authors present a framework for an immersive modeling system with a hybrid 2D/3D user interface. The designer is immersed in the design space, which improves his awareness of the design objects under consideration. 2D and 3D human-computer interaction techniques are combined in the user interface to improve the efficiency of the modeler. While 3D interaction is natural for a number of design tasks, 2D interaction is particularly helpful for interaction with menus and dialog boxes, for precise manipulations and for editing operations that are subject to constraints.

Visinet: collaborative 3D visualization and VR over ATM networks

Visinet-a trans-European 3D collaborative design project-brings people together in shared environments supported by ATM networks. Initial trials targeted architectural and industrial design.

Training social learning skills by collaborative mobile gaming in museums

The use of handheld computers as a tool to enrich the museum experience has found its way into many museums, opening up new possibilities to increase the attractiveness of museum visits, especially for youngsters. We developed a mobile guide framework that supports the creation of mobile guides and adheres to social-constructivist principles of learning. The mobile museum game we created with this framework aims at developing the social, cognitive and technical skills of the users. Large scale evaluations show the potential power of our approach to stimulate interaction between youngsters and to create a playful learning experience.

Reducing population size while maintaining diversity

This paper presents a technique to drastically reduce the size of a population, while still maintaining sufficient diversity for evolution. An advantage of a reduced population size is the reduced number of fitness evaluations necessary. In domains where calculation of fitness values is expensive, this results in a huge speedup of the search. Additionally, in the experiments performed, smaller populations also resulted in a faster convergence speed towards an optimal solution.

Dip - it: digital infrared painting on an interactive table

In this paper we report on our work to develop a novel input technique for a digital paint system. Using a brush with infrared (IR) light emitting fibers, we were able to create a natural paint interface on an interactive table. This IR-brush adds two important properties to our paint environment: haptic feedback and an accurate brush footprint. The modified brush approaches the haptic feedback of the traditional paint brush. The use of IR-light in the brush enables tracking the contact area of the brush on the interactive table. Informal usability tests show that our digital paint environment offers an intuitive interface and contributes to an enhanced user experience in digital painting.

Collision avoidance and map construction using synthetic vision

In this paper, we present a method to implement a navigation system for an intelligent agent that exists in a virtual world to generate collision-free motion. To observe the world, the agent uses virtual sensors consisting of the depth buffer information of a rendered image of the scene. This information is used to generate low-level collision avoidance, obstacle avoidance when moving to intermediate goals, and to create an accessibility graph and an obstacle map of the environment. The agent does not require access to the internal representation of the virtual world, which is similar to perception in mobile robots in the real world. Furthermore, the algorithm used is fast enough to work in real time.

Reducing Bloat in Genetic Programming

In this paper, several techniques will be presented to constrain the growth of solutions that are constructed by genetic programming. The most successful technique imposes a maximum size on the created individuals of the population that depends solely on the size of the best individual of the population. This method will be compared with other methods to reduce bloat, demonstrating that this method reduces bloat significantly better than the other methods.

Utilizing Parallel Processing in Computer Animation

When designing and developing a 3D computer animation system, numerous interrelated issues and concepts have to be taken into account. Given our limiting factors of a low starting budget and the knowledge that current and future animation systems require huge amounts of processing power, we came to the development of a 3D computer animation system using a transputer platform. A description is given of how we combined traditional animation techniques with the facilities of our Computer Animation Environment Language, yielding a powerful 3D animation system in which animations can be produced that previously could take a considerable amount of time.

Large-Scale Networked Virtual Environments: Architecture and Applications.

Purpose – Scalability is an important research topic in the context of networked virtual environments (NVEs). This paper aims to describe the ALVIC (Architecture for Large‐scale Virtual Interactive Communities) approach to NVE scalability.Design/methodology/approach – The setup and results from two case studies are shown: a 3‐D learning environment through which long‐term sick children can stay in close contact with their school environment; and a 3‐D mobile city guide, in which city inhabitants and visitors can form a virtual community in which they share information and communicate with each other.Findings – These case studies clearly demonstrate the applicability of the ALVIC architecture. In order to be able to create even larger NVEs, a next‐generation client‐server NVE architecture is proposed: ALVIC‐NG, which employs proxy servers and logic servers in order to balance the server load.Research limitations/implications – Further scalability tests need to be performed to evaluate this new architecture...