Sunday 16th July –
Day 3 left me feeling mildly optimistic about the merits of pursuing Meta Spark as an augmented reality tool. I’d had numerous unresolved problems with the patch editor with one of my projects which completely knocked my confidence. However, today was a brand new start and I was eager to continue learning.
The next video in the series was introducing the idea of 3d augmented reality text. I think that 3d text could be a useful visual aid to any project so I decided to try it. This instructional video proved useful because it also used the Patch editor thus giving me another opportunity to test it out.
The lady in the instructional video was very good and gave clear instructions. Therefore, I was able to very quickly produce not only 3d augmented reality text, but also animated augmented reality text.
Below is a video short of what I achieved.
Augmented Reality Animated 3d Text
I was actually quite pleased with the results above, so I decided to venture out on my own to see what I could make. I managed to animate a cube with a set material and some 3d text, but unfortunately I struggled badly with getting my cube to rotate as required. I changed the settings on both the x, y and z axis, but regardless of the changes, I couldn’t get the cube to rotate as desired. Below is a video of my augmented reality experiments.
Augmented Reality Animated Cube with 3d Animated Text
What Did I Learn?
I felt that I had a really productive day today. I learned a number of things. Firstly, I learned how to colour 3d objects using different environmental settings. Secondly, I learned how to make objects shiny. Thirdly, I learned how to animate both a cube and 3d text using the patch editor. I still have many unanswered questions but I feel much more confident with the user interface
What Did I Actually Achieve?
I managed to add a graffiti image to a rotating cube, so I now have an understanding of how environments work. I also managed to set target objects from my new Graffiti book and have animated shiny 3d text pop up when the target image was recognised. I am leaving day 4 more optimistic than yesterday and I have a specific tutorial planned for tomorrow that deals with image sequences.
