Isadora Cues with Leap Motion

Skulpture

Hi @gbevin great to have you on board.

In response to your question about finger data I can only answer with a prediction and personal slant. The Isadora software is used in such a wide content; its not just a media server, VJ program or theatre/dance playback, people use it for all sorts of weird and wonderful stuff.

As an admin and pro user of the software I read so many wonderful projects from people all over the world and to explain why people would want access to the finger data could be the length of my arm. I am sure people will reply individually to give you a better idea.

One area that is interesting for me is the disability/accessibility realm. To allow a disabled person to paint digitally just using one finger would be great. This can be done using isadora for the graphical part.

Another is being able to pinch and zoom and use individual fingers for individual tasks, etc. Hard to explain really. Finger 1 = projector brightness 1, Finger 2 = projector brightness 2, and so forth.

I hope this helps a little.

Graham (skulpture)

particlep

i"ve taken a leap into this arena ( intentional pun ) my leap motion has arrived today. i have some ideas caentred around a gallery experience. as i begin my research i"ll be looking for the variability of the relationships between ... for example the tips of the fingers and the heel of the hand. i have some os upgrading work to do first.

Skulpture

Ace! Do let us know how you get on @particlep :)

Armando

Dear Geert,

thank you for your wonderful software. I bought it immediately and I use it with pleasure. I can tell you and we all can, I tink in this forum, give some feedback on it.

Since you ask I think that passing geco to osc is a great move. Having floats instead of 0-127 integers that midi uses allow more steps and smoothness to interactions. This would be my first option although we all understand that midi is essential for music because it is a standard. But Ableton live customers now have access to o/c through max for live so I think these users will appreciate.

Ok why fingers. Not only drawing but more accurate control of music parameters. A multidimensional one. For instance controlling 3 parameters with 3 fingers and 3 others with hand.

and also introducing gestures (distance between fingers cans be calculated in Isadora and be another parameter...

Second thing is fingers. I think it is important to add the 30 parameters that represent X,Y and Z position of each finger. But it has to be done in a certain way I think personally.

1) separate x, y, z position of each fingers

2) (very important) recognize each hand individually as right and left (as you already do in geco)

First comment: "Leap to osc" is not a good example in this. What it does WHICH IS NOT GOOD IN MY OPINION is that it recognize first hand in the field as hand 0 (regerdless if it is right or left hand). For example if I have left hand only in the leap camera field it is "hand 0". But if I take it out and enter the right hand it is still hand zero. Geco recognizes right and left hand separately. Very good point for geco

Second comment: "Osc motion" doesn't even have hand information just x,y,z for each finger

3) (very important too) Recognizing each finger individually based on the position in relationship to the each hand. This means being able to always recognize the left thumb as left thumb, left index as left index, etc. and also different from right index and right thumb of course.

First comment: "Leap to osc" send x,y,z floats for each finger but it recognizes the first finger as finger 0\. the second as finger 1\. regardless of what finger it is in realtionship with the hand. Very confusing. If I enter the leap camera field with left hand the software should detect left hand and send a integer (1) for left hand presence (as geco already already does even if it sends a 127 for obvious reasons). And it should also send x,y,z for each finger. Now What would really make geco stand up, is that if I close all fingers but one (like index for instance) i should still have x,y and z values for the index. and keep these values going on for the index even if I unfold a second finger (like thumb). Now if I fold index and keep the thumb unfolded and moving, I should have thumbs coordinates flowing. Basically we need finger recognition as you already do hand recognition.

Second comment : "Osc motion" has the same problem that "leap to osc" have. finger 1 is the first finger regardless of what finger it is.

I'D LOVE to see that in geco..... I can thoroughly test that if you want. You can write to me privately to if you want. a.menicacci at me.com

All the best and keep up the beautiful work Geert. I Love Geco

dbini

Armando - nice ideas. Geco is by far the most useful Leap app i've tried. its got some clever little options, like the ability to link open and closed hand values so that you can use open/closed as a switch without the values jumping around.

OSC out is going to be great.

10 durable sets of XYZ finger tracking positions would be amazing. Skulpture's right - this opens up a whole new world of interactivity for those with limited movement.

i'm currently experimenting with using my Leap through Geco into Isadora to control visuals for classical musicians in a similar way to using MIDI controller data from knob-twiddling electronic musicians.

and making crazy digital mirrors for kids to play with.

Skulpture

"My opinion is that it recognize first hand in the field as hand 0 (regardless if it is right or left hand). "

I totally agree with this! It would be super cool if this was possible.

Armando

It is possible Skulpture, Geco (current midi version) already does it. And I'm sure it is possible since leap people schematized the hands like Kinect people schematized the skeleton (the latter actually stealing the idea from our common friend - with Mark - Antonio camurri that did it with one camera ten years before in Genava Italy EYESWEB.ORG. But that's another story......

gbevin

A small heads-up for everyone. I just submitted the new GECO version with full OSC output support, which includes configurable OSC paths. It also has support now for setting up different boundaries for each gesture axis for each hand, including dead zones around the center. This allows you to plan out gesture ranges in 3D space. There are a bunch of other features (like full CopperLan support), but I don't think they're relevant for Isadora users.

This release should be available as a free update in the Airspace Store in a couple of days, just the time to go through the Leap Motion verification phase.

@Armando, thanks a lot for the detailed information about how you see fingers being useful, this has given me quite a few ideas. However, at this point it will not work due to how the Leap Motion software behaves. That being said, I've been working closely with Leap Motion for the next update to their protocol, so that fingers preserve their identity and are much better recognized relative to hand positions. It will take a little while for this to come out and then the required changes to be done in GECO, but it's on the planning. There are some other ideas that this will enable, like for instance triggering actions by touching fingers. I think this will be very nice to launch particular operations or to play notes.

Thanks a lot for all your kind comments of GECO! :-)

Skulpture

Thats brilliant @gbevin :) thanks for joining the forum and communicating with us all :)

Let's see what comes out of it :)

vanakaru

Just updated to Maverick to test my new LeapMotion controller(I passed Lions altogether). GECO works very well on new OS X. Very easy to set up Isadora to receive MIDI CC.

Armando

Thanks gbevin. I'm looking in the airspace, but I didn't find the new version of geco yet. Do you know why?

Anyway I think that discrete hand recognition is possible due to the geometry of hands (thumbs in afferent angle than other fingers).

Can't wait to see it.

gbevin

@armando Leap Moton is overbooked with app submissions, they're looking at my GECO submission as we speak and hope to have it done in a few hours.

gbevin

@armando the update is live now :-)

dbini

hi Geert @gbevin - the new version of GECO is great. I like the boundary controls.

One feature I would like to see is the possibility of swapping the X axis from 2 separate fields into one field with zero at one end and 100% at the other.

Currently, we have zero in the middle of the axis, with the left hand generating higher numbers the further left it travels, and the right hand generating higher numbers the further right it travels.

It might be useful to have the option to make the left end of the field zero and the right end 100% - or to swap them around - this would make it easier to recognise swipe gestures that are applicable to either hand. i'm thinking of something like a museum exhibition (@Skulpture) where users can swipe through information by waving either hand over the LEAP.

Its not really an issue with the Y and Z axes, they each function as one field, so its easier to set up a calculation to work out which direction a hand is travelling, but i've had trouble doing this with the X axis.

all the best,

john

Armando

Thanks gbevin. I'm looking into it as we speak. Detailed report soon.

N1ckFG

I've added Isadora channel support to my Leap OSC controller, ManosOSC--just change the format type in the settings:

https://airspace.leapmotion.com/apps/manososc/

vanakaru

N1ckFG

I had a run with it for couple of hours. I like the ease of getting it going. Great app!

particlep

has anyone used geco's o-s-c output with isadora ?

i've left a post on the geco forum about not seeing any o-s-c output other than 5 stream id's when enabling o-s-c output.

i'm using local host and the isadora port number in the geco document settings panel.

i'm in a place where i'm not sure if it's my bad driving or something wrong under the hood with geco.

particlep

i'm happy to report that the fault was with the operator.

in the gesture config window the output channel holds the 1-16 for midi and then o-s-c and then cpl. this is also covered in geco's user manual.

my investigations had simply missed these two bits of info.

everything is fine and dandy.

Armando

Hello,

recent and today's update in leap motion drivers leads us to some thinking in order to help Gego and other middleware to get data into Isadora (although an izzy actor in c would be the ideal thing because software like geco is using 27 % of an intel 2.7 ghz i7 with 16gb of ram under Maverick.)

Now. Geek osc version is just great we can write our own tags!

But the new version of leap motion driver is really stunning for a few reasons.

1) Leapmotion visualizer seems to overcome somehow crossing hands. If you switch hands horizontally your right hand is now left of screen but it is the right hand. And same for the left of course.

2) Turning a hand bottom up doesn't mixes fingers!!!! If you out right hand hand palm up now the thumb is in the right place.

3) And even better, It seems to be able to recognize what hand is in the field even if the hand is bottom up!!!!! Wow! Hands right thumb is still right thumb on screen even if right hand enters on the left end of the sensor's field of vision with palm up!!!!!!! I can see this because if I do this geco's right hand valus start to trigger.

Geco has a clever way to to this called dexterity detection. And it is good it stays that way for precision. But now everything seems right just out of leap driver.

In my opinion this means that leap people ttought the driver to recognize hands geometry in order to detect which it is and if it is bottom up or normal palm down.

As for geco I would suggest an option that ignores if fingers are open or closed. It would be just a “palm orientation” feature because otherwise you always have to be with spread fingers and cannotrelax or the contrary. Now, this can be avoided in geco addressing open and closed fingers to the same osc tags or midi channel and controller and then “linking the 2 modes (spread and closed) with the linking chain in geco. But it is quite a bit of work…

Now I’m dreaming…. And if geco could also receive midi or osc and have different preset in a same document. We could hand or sensor trigger diferent presets for different moments or funcions of the installation….. Maybe version 2?

Best