Posts made by Graziano Terenzi

@malaise said:

Back after a while (service-travel..), I've downloaded the "modified version" but encountering some trouble with licensing. After proper uninstall of the previous version ( the one without scale option ), I put the newest one. The licencing procedure never runs correctly, no chance to reach the one-line licensing module and so I can't activate the full program... Back to the previous version, then all works perfectly even the licensing process.

May be, I do something wrong, or some files are missing..Please, let's see the Userguide pdf files they contain broken or very old URL, and according to me, the licensing explanation procedure is quite less clear than before.

Regards

MALAISE

Dear Malaise,

sorry for the problems. Before explaining the new licensing procedure, here is the rationale behind the change: the previous licensing model forced users to bind their license to a single machine quite tightly and had no simple license transfer procedure. On the other hand, with the new procedure users can 'transfer' their licenses among their machines easily.

Briefly, the new procedure is as follow:

1. users freely register on the website
2. users log in in a reserved area where they can:
   2.1 buy one or more licenses
   2.2 activate a license (if already bought some licenses)
   2.3 release a license (if already activated)

The activate/release process is required to let users "transfer" a license. The main advantage of this approach is that it all happens in realtime, so you do not have to wait for any email.

So, talking about your case, it looks like you have to do the registration on the website (we could do it on behalf of you, but you should do it by yourself in order to choose a personal password). Of course you do not need to follow step 2.1, but when you will be registered we'll make a license available for you. Once we make the license available, you can login to get the license ID for new request ID your plugin will generate.

I have to remark however that old links do not work anymore since they have been substituted by the completely new mechanism.

Thank you again for your precious feedback.

If you keep encountering any problem, don't hesitate to contact us. But as usual we welcome open discussion on this forum.

With reference to the MAC version of ARplugin

@brk said:

Any updates on the mac version?

we are working on it. We will keep you informed.

Regards

Graziano

I will announce a new release of ARplugin soon. It will include a scaling option, a newer and much more flexible license management system, and finally a stundent and an educational license.

In the meanwhile, I must confess that an upload on our website of a version of ARplugin endowed with the first two aforementioned features has been made today.
If you want, you can download it
http://www.inglobetechnologies.com/en/products/arplugin_su/info.php.

Graziano

Jakob,
thank you very much for your feedback and suggestions, which come in the spirit of this competent and passionate community.

1. As anticipated, we will release ARplugin V1.1 very soon. It will include a basic scaling option.

2. We will also make the use of several markers available soon with a future upgrade of the ARplugin. With regards to Dynamic Components, we are studying how to employ this fantastic functionality within our framework. Your thoughts on this topic seem very interesting.

3. With regards to student license, we had a little delay. Anyway we plan to release the student license in one or two weeks.

Thank you again
Regards

Graziano

Hi Jim, Hi Malaise,

To Jim:

@jim said:

Instead of putting the model in the hands (or on the table, etc), is it possible to put ones self inside a model? Or maybe in front of a model? So if giving a presentation on a very large screen, for example a house model could be projected at actual size.

The idea of having a model at actual size and keep it fixed in a real environment while only the user is moving around is not a weird thought. Actually you could also arrange a situation like this using the ARplugin by

1. printing the marker at a suitable size,
2. setting a scaling parameter properly and
3. setting the right distance between camera and marker so as to focus on a significant part of the scene.

Of course this would not always be a practical solution. Indeed, issues of stability and effectiveness must be taken into account before trying to do this. Neverthless this can be accomplished by using the ARplugin as such with the forthcoming (very soon) scaling option set up.

With regards to animation, we can also think to animate the model. ARmedia allows animation, but it must implemented in association to Sketchup. Rather what you point out is something that resembles classical Virtual Reality, in which a user is immersed in a totally synthetic environment, moving around and sensing by means of suitable devices like a 3D mouse and an Head Mounted Display. This too can be done using ARmedia. Maybe we will introduce such a capability in a future upgrade.

To Malaise:

@malaise said:

Another feedback, when interrupting a calculation before its achievement leads you to see a rotating Inglobe-marked cube . Only pressing <ESC> will send back to SketchUp "space".

Actually we did not regard this as a problem. We have deliberatively introduced this standard visualization modality when calculation is interrupted. Anyway we can take into account the possibility to block this form of visualization for future versions. Let me know your thoughts about this, please.

Thank you again.
Regards

Graziano

Hi Malaise,

thank you for your precious feedback. Actually there is a little problem with the licensing mechanism in very exceptional cases. It seems that your situation belongs to that small set. However we are fixing this too and we will upload a fixed version very soon.
Regards

Graziano

Hi Malaise, Hi Pav

To Malaise:
we are working to fix up minor transparecy issues. Of course we will upload newly updated versions when available. We recommend you always to download the latest version available.

With regards to offline use

@malaise said:

Can we use the Plugin offline ? ( I mean the licensed version without been connected to the web ). MALAISE

of course you can use it also when you are not connected to internet.

To Pav:

@pav_3j said:

I have to make a "fly-by" video for a uni project soon, could I make a video on site with the coded paper already on site and then use this program to implement the model onto it?
Pav

It seems that you would like to provide a previously recorded video as input to the plugin and then use it to display augmented content. Even if this function is fully supported by our ARmedia framework, we have not yet implemented it in the first version of this ARmedia plugin. It will be available in very short time. Most of all main improvements will be available soon with no additional cost to those who already have bought a license.

Last, I want to inform you that both a studentand an educational license will be released within the beginning of the new year.

Best regards and Happy New Year

Graziano

Hi MALAISE,
I'm glad for your appreciations...

@malaise said:

Really quite interesting plugin.
I've solve the scaling problem printing a smaller marker ( 1/2 and 1/4).
I can now display on that way, objects without resizing them before exporting.

Yes, of course your trick is a good workaround to the scaling problem, anyway we're going to add a feature to scale up/down the model by pressing a key (of course this update will be availabe to everyone, even to already registered users...just re-donwload the updated version when it will be ready)

@malaise said:

Are some enhancements in study to associate as I rode ( Ross, Chris and Mike)different skp files with separate markers and also as it's shown in Inglobe's Galerie ?

We'll add the possibility to use many markers with different objects, but we're studying the best way to do it in SketchUp, for example one way could be to associate different 'scenes' to different markers and not only different .skp files to different markers, so...stay tuned

@malaise said:

How could we manage the shadows created in SketchUp ?

Shadows (and shaders in general) is a topic that deserves investigation. For sure shaders will be implemented in the plugin.

@malaise said:

Possibilities of animations like the " Mars's satellites " may extend plugin's use.

Adding animations is one of our next goal, our AR-media framework already manages animations and many user's interactions tasks, we just need to understand the best way to port every framework's features in the plugin as well.

@malaise said:

I 'm going to use this fantastic tool for teaching and explain mecanisms
MALAISE

Great Please let us know about how your teaching activities will proceed and about your suggestions and also about students ones.

Best regards.
Graziano

Thank you for this other gift, Malaise!
Keep us informed with your use of ARplugin.

Graziano

We have simplified the online payment procedure: now we ask only for a valid email account, your name+surname (or company name) and then you can go on with a standard paypal transaction.

Best regards.
Graziano.

Hi all,
this is the first post in christmas day i've ever done. Merry Christmas!

Let me remark that this topic is taking many directions each of which deserves special attention. Malaise posted a first pic made by using ARplugin....this looks great.

First of all, for what concerns licensing issues

@unknownuser said:

Please : Could you tell us how to get licence easily, because some item of the registration way seem to be
difficult to fill for private user ( VAT.. ) Is there any other solution to pay on line ? ( Paypal for instance..)

actually we are using a simple paypal procedure. After compiling the first form you will be able to make a paypal transaction. We have only been asking fiscal data (be it a private users or a company) for billing details. However we are going to simplify the first form soon.

Second, I've read about ideas on how to use ARplugin to illustrate projects, especially by Mike and Chris. Everything is very interesting, but the point made by Chris explains clearly and in a very simple way how ARplugin could be employed to see how a 3D model would appear when located in the real place.

Third, another recurring topic concerns the option to create a player to be used by clients independently of the designer. We are going to upgrade the plugin with this functionality, in such a way as to give the opportunity to create a separate executable.

Merry Christmas

Graziano

@chris fullmer said:

I installed it here and it all went just fine, but when I tried to run it the first time, it asked me to select a video input device. And it had a list of 2. But I've only got 1 installed. The 2nd one was something like ATI unified stream or something. I really don't rememebr exactly what it said. Anyhow, from the list I selected the quickcam, but it just shows a black screen when the plugin is running.

Hi Chris, we had an issue regarding environments with multiple-video devices (being them real or 'fake') but we just solved it and we're going to upload a new plugin version just today (or tomorrow) after some tests anyway.

The new updated version will popup a different selection dialog box if more than 1 device is found, and then run the plugin with the correct selection (although we cannot still avoid 'fakes' to appear in the list).

BTW, starting from the next update, just near the download link we will add the date of the last upload, so that you can understand if there is something new or not. Later we're going to add also a list of features added or that we're going to add soon.

Regards.
Graziano

Hi Malaise,

with reference to your basic problem

@unknownuser said:

I'm encountering some difficulties when using ARplugin. I'm asked for connecting a cam whereas it's already connected but not recognized.

maybe you are using a computer (e.g. a laptop) with two webcam installed. In this case you should try to make sure of having only one webcam enabled, the other must be disabled.

@unknownuser said:

Questions : do we have to use Sketchup V7 ? ( I still use V6 )

No, Sketchup V6 works fine.

@unknownuser said:

Is the size of the skp file is involve into image calculation ( more then 30 s are needed) ?

As I have remarked in a previous post, model size is not a problem for the plugin. However if teh model is very big, it could take more than 30 sec to load. This is not a limitation of the full version.

@unknownuser said:

Does the cam automatically switch on, when the plugin is running ?

This depends on the settings of your computer, not on the plugin. Generally it does.

Feedback is always welcome

Graziano

Hi Scott,
I'm going to answer your questions:

@unknownuser said:

I am wondering about the capabilities of this plugin in regards to:
are the file size limitations to this plugin? whether it be number of faces or overall file size. We ran a large model (400+mb) at it and it never recognized the model before the 30 second limitation was up.

Talking about the recognition capabilities of the plugin, models size is not a limitation nor it is the models complexity. Of course users must have enough resources to treat such big models like in any real-time application. Specifically, one point that deserves attention is texturing: many 3D graphic cards that cannot treat non-power of 2 textures dimensions, usually will try to rescale textures on-the-fly each time the model should 'appear' on screen, so if there are lots of such textures and not enough video memory, you could experience delays before the object is actually displayed. I'd like to remark that models that should be rendered in real-time deserve attention both in keeping a low polygons count and in using 'standard' size textures.

@unknownuser said:

Can there be multiple markers within a single model? Meaning, can we have one marker for a conference room and then transfer to a marker in an office without loading a seperate model? Other AR's offer a function like this I am just wondering if this could be a possibility with this plug in.

Basically, our framework allows to have the same object associated to many markers, as well as to have many objects associated to the same marker or different markers. It also allows to have some relationship among markers for the same objects. If you mean to have two distinct models associated with two distinct markers, it is possible within ARmedia, even though it is not yet implemented in the ARplugin as such. This functionality will surely come with a future upgrade. On the other hand, if you refer to a single distributed application running on two or more machines at the same time, this also could be implemented on demand but would be far beyond the scope of a basic version of ARplugin.

@unknownuser said:

What else is offered with a purchased license that we not have with the demo?
Scott

The licensed version allows you to have a customizable message, no time limit. We are also adding other functionalities that will be released soon after this first market test, that will be provided to customers of the previous release with no additional cost.

I hope I covered each point
Regards

Graziano

Hi all,

sorry if I have not come back here before but I've been following the discussion going on the Augemented Reality Plugin for Google Sketchup Thread on this same Forum.
Anyway, we are considering the opportunity to release a Mac plugin as soon as we can according to our development schedule.
Any suggestion will be welcome.

Graziano

Well, with reference to animated models I have to remark that the general framework of ARmedia allows the visualization of animated models as well as the definition of suitable control actions over the models themselves. For what concerns Sketchup, we are studying to which extent Sketchup is compatible with the treatment of animations within our framework and enventually which steps should be taken in order to extend the Plugin.

Graziano

Thank you again. Any suggestion for improving the ARplugin is welcome. So feel free to comment. I have seen many portfolios of ours...you are doing great work with Sketchup! This is really a lively comunity.
Graziano

The ARplug-in as such does implement basic augmented reality functionalities.
However it is possible to introduce further functionalities like the ones you are mentioning. Both scaling the model and allowing bottom-up perspective by using two orthogonal markers can be integrated in the plug-in. Thank you for sharing with us suggestions which we will surely be implemented in a future upgrade of ARplug-in.

With reference to a comment by BTM

@unknownuser said:

•BTM on Wed Dec 17, 2008 10:00 pm
Any mac versions out yet/ set to come out soon?

we plan to release a mac version not soon, but we will surely release one.

Thank you Jim for your detailed review, it helps me to give some information about improvements and refinements we're already working on.

@jim said:

I could not control the size of the video - it was full screen or nothing. For me that was bad because my old computer can't manage full-screen video without choking. Also it's impossible to take a screen capture at that size (for me) so I can't show you anything.

The possibility to toggle full screen mode on/off will be available soon, as well as other improvments such as scaling the model depending on user needs.

@jim said:

The model (a default-colored cube) was completely black onscreen, not sure why. There was an option to switch to wireframe mode which made things better, but sort of defeats the purpose.

Depending on how you draw your model, sometimes you'll need
to reverse the model's faces in order to be sure that the model itself is not 'inside-out' and so look black (you can reverse faces by selecting the model, right clicking on the selection and choosing 'Reverse Faces') .

@jim said:

Also, the cube was too large taking up most of the on screen video. Scaling the cube down in SketchUp did not make any difference to the size of the cube in the video.

Once the model is displayed in augmented reality it is automatically scaled in such a way that it will be visible from a distance. The fixed scaling factor has been chosen considering that most times users will use the plugin with complex models (lets think about a portion of a city...) with lot of 'empties' but whose extension/extremes can be wide so making the model smaller would make it also not visible very well, even though its 'bounding box' would be completely visible.
Of course the improvement will be an adjustable scaling factor and, as stated above, we're already working on it and will be available soon.

Thank you very much again
Best Regards

Graziano

The "code" also called the "marker" is a .pdf file that comes with the installation pack. In order to print it just pick up the "marker.pdf" file and print it as you usually print any .pdf document using a common printer.
Regards
Graziano

Thank you solo,

yes, it is the paper the guy is moving. The paper contanins a printed code that is recognized and tracked by our software. What the ARPlugin does is to superimpose the 3D model on the video stream captured by the videocamera whenever it "sees" the code. And it does so in real-time and in a realistic way.