Michael Gkion

Real Time Online Motion Capture for Entertainment Applications

We present a real-time online animation and lip syncing solution based on personal motion sensing for use in entertainment and theme park applications. Our solution streams real-time motion capture based animation, video and voice data over the Internet using UDP. Motion capture data is streamed from the eMove mocap suit over the Internet into a client application, which provides a lip synced 3D animated character or puppet. Applications include online digital puppeteering and games where the character is animated in real time.

An open source Grid based render farm for Blender 3D

Growing demand for scientific simulations that visualise results through 3D graphics requires high quality 3D models and animations. Better quality 3D models, e.g. more complex geometry and photo-realistic rendering, always need more time and computational power for rendering. The rendering process assumes time and power are inversely proportional to each other, the less computational power you have the more time you require to render and the more power you have the less time you need to render. Traditionally, a render farm requires a cluster of computers to perform satisfactory rendering in terms of computational power and time, but not every scientific organization can afford such clusters. This paper presents an open source Grid based render farm, which can be plugged into Blender 3D as a tool bar that exploits a Condor based Grid.

How to Build an Open Source Render Farm based on Desktop Grid Computing

This paper presents an experiment on how to implement a Grid-based High Performance Computing solution using existing resources typically available in a teaching or research laboratory. A cost-effective solution is proposed based on open source software components, and, where appropriate, our own software solutions, for large scientific applications in the public sector such as universities and research institutes. In such institutions, classical solutions for HPC are often not affordable, yet they usually have at their disposal a large number of machines that can be utilised. The Department of Informatics at University of Sussex, for example, has just installed 150 new Core2 Duo machines across 3 laboratories. By scaling this number up across the whole University, it can result a large potential computing resource for utilization. Typical processor usage rates are often somewhere between 10% and 20% (i.e. user-generated processes) for most machines. This paper proposes a solution that exploits the remaining 80% to 90% processor power through consumption of available computer idle time without disturbing current users. To achieve this goal, the open source Condor High Throughput Computing software was selected and implemented as a desktop Grid computing solution. This paper presents our experiences in finding a solution so that other institutions can develop similar Grid solutions for their own large scientific experiments, taking advantage of their existing resources. The implementation of our solution is analyzed in the context of building a render farm.

Museum Interactive Experiences through a 3D Reconstruction of the Church of Santa Chiara

This paper presents a unique museum interactive experience that provides a ‘digital repatriation’ of the Church of Santa Chiara located in Florence, Italy (deconsecrated in 1808) with its chapel and altars that are located in the recently opened Medieval and Renaissance Galleries at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London. This digital repatriation, for the enjoyment of the cultural heritage tourist, is achieved through a 3D reconstruction of the church, chapel and altars embedded in a touch screen interactive with their associated digital heritage content based around the themes of People involved in the church during the renaissance period, Different Views of the church, and related Altarpiece and Churches from the Florentine renaissance period. The main interactive is based on a 3D reconstruction and photo-realistic rendering available to visitors at the Victoria and Albert Museum, Medieval and Renaissance Galleries; in addition a Wed 3D version (or virtual museum) is also available online for the digital tourist.

Collaborative 3D digital content creation exploiting a Grid network

The increase in ease of the production of computer simulated graphics has opened new opportunities in the 3D industry. There are unlimited applications for the delivery of 3D Graphics especially concerning 3D multimedia presentation of digital content. Apart from aesthetic and entertaining reasons, experts apply computer simulations to visualize environments and to identify early errors or costs in order to limit the need of making real prototypes. Thus, 3D Graphics also minimize the time required for developing the final product. Existing 3D applications give partial support to users to engage in collaborative contribution for the production of a 3D model. However, when 3D artists are required to collaboratively produce a high quality 3D model based on thousands of polygons, they have to integrate the different parts of the model when the modelling process has been completed, which is a slow tedious process. This paper investigates how to dynamically and simultaneously apply changes to the same 3D model based on a collaborative network exploiting a Grid infrastructure.

An Integrated Workflow Management Solution for Heritage Information Mashups

This paper outlines the process of developing and deploying an integrated workflow management solution for our system that uniquely integrates heritage data mashups whose digital content is derived from social network repositories and a specific museum digital collections repository and presentation system called ARCO. This workflow solution accommodates a number of integration techniques, based on social networking with user defined content, and using virtual and augmented reality in a Web 2.0 mashup to dynamically present digital heritage content. Other technologies exploited in this scenario include a web service based Grid solution for generating 3D virtual reconstruction animations. The implementation of the workflow solution is based on the Windows Workflow Foundation while the adoption of the multi-tiered human workflow architecture leads to a fully integrated workflow management engine.