We are pleased to announce we are opening a purpose built studio in Sydney in conjunction with our sister company Iloura.
Our feet should be tucked under our brand new desks by the end of November at Omnilab HQ in Yurong Street East Sydney.
With thanks to Grey and Greenseas we recently got to launch our first project featuring Flash Smile Detection.
Greenseas are so friendly to the ocean when they fish in it they even make friends with the weirdest looking fish in the Ocean. Click here to read more.
Boffswana had a very successful evening at the MADC Award Show with all of our entries being recognised by the judges.
We collected a full house winning a Gold, Silver, Bronze and a Highly Commended.
The Honda Dream Wall interactive installation won a GOLD in the Digital Innovation category and a SILVER in the Digital Design Category.
The ANZ Give Sam a Serve 3D Tennis Experience won a BRONZE in the Digital Innovation category and a Highly Commended in the Digital Design Category. Click here to read more.
Boffswana has teamed up with Mediacom to create Area 52 – a live immersive brand experience for Alienware.
Alienware is the high end computer hardware product that allows gamers to be transported into their favorite games like no other product.
The brief for the Alienware : Area 52 project was to create an experience for a live audience that would transport them into a game like environment. Click here to read more.
The Honda Dreamwall has been awarded the FWA Site of the Day Award for the 3rd of April 2011.
This marks the first time that the FWA has been awarded to an Interactive Installation, which also brings us our 5th FWA SOTD award!
Congratulations to the team at DTDigital and Boffswana for this ground breaking first.
Read about the project here.
Honda Interactive Dream Wall takes home Best Entertainment Award at the 17th AIMIA Awards in Sydney!
This is the first interactive experience of it’s kind in Australia and only the second in the world.
Read about the project here.
The Samsung Mr Know It All campaign website has been cleaning up at the awards recently:
Gold for Best Microsite – John Caples International Awards.
Bronze for Best Use of Online Video – Adfest Cyber Lotus
Bronze for Best Integrated Cyber Campaign – Adfest Cyber Lotus
Read about the project here.
We’re pleased to announce that our little iPhone Augmented Reality “Proto” Demo is now available for all to download. Now you too can direct Proto to do your bidding – well at least direct him to walk around your world.
He features as part of the “String Labs Showcase” app now available through the iTunes App Store, and was featured in The Daily today.
We’re very excited to see this getting in the hands of iPhone users to try for themselves. We’re also pumped about the opportuniteis for brands and look forward to creating some cool iPhone AR immersive brand experiences.
Boffswana and Mark have teamed up to create a 3D Interactive Serving Game Installation featuring Sam Stosur for ANZ at the Australian Open.
‘Give Sam a Serve’ is an interactive experience that uses the latest 3D and face tracking technology to give Open goers the priceless opportunity to go one-on-one against Australia’s top ranked player.
The strategy, idea and creative came from Mark and Boffswana primarily handled the execution including the racket sensor interface, and software and the steroscoping live action production.
Click here to read more.
Boffswana and DTDigital have combined with Honda Australia to create an Australian first for the International Motor Show: The Honda ‘Dream Wall’ installation.
The immersive dream creation experience combines cutting-edge facial recognition and emotion sensing technology to power a series of animations that are triggered by the detection of a person’s smile.
This is the first interactive experience of it’s kind in Australia and only the second in the world (the first was an ice cream vending machine by SapientNitro for Unilever). The installation software integrates the Fraunhofer technology SHORE (Sophisticated Highspeed Object Recognition Engine) which is a highly optimized software library for face and object detection and fine analysis Click here to read more.
Boffswana entered the MADC Awards for the first time this year with two projects across three categories and were very pleased to be awarded for all entries.
Most pleasing was the win for both entries in the Digital Innovation category including a much coveted Silver for Honey Nut Cheerios.
A huge congratulations to the Boffswana team who accepted the awards in fine style on the night and to everyone who has worked so hard on these projects to make them world class innovative brand experiences. Click here to read more.
Boffswana are collaborating with Marc Ecko, New York for the ‘Cut & Sew’ Fall Collection Campaign “Digital Muse” featuring Lindsay Lohan. Marc Ecko designs inspired by American artist and illustrator Robert McGinnis are brought to life interactively and further heightened with a compelling Augmented Reality experience.
“I cast Lindsay because people are fascinated with her – they can either feel good or bad things, but they are feeling some type of emotion. She’s a pop culture icon,” Ecko said in a release.
Marc Ecko’s had a vision of creating a multi-dimensional augmented reality experience and entrusted Boffswana to navigate through this very exciting and uncharted territory in terms of AR content and concept.
The ‘Digital Muse’ provides users an experience of intimate interaction with Lindsay Lohan in a way not seen with AR blurring the line between viewing and interacting with content.
Click here to read more.
We are proud to announce that Honeyway Train AR Game has won an FWA Site Of The Day award.
A world first Augmented Reality game using Unity. The game uses the Honey Nut Cheerios cereal box as the game controller. Users manoeuvre the box to fly Buzz to the ultimate showdown with honey bandit Handsome Hector.
Boffswana’s list of FWA Site Of the Day Awards now include:
1) www.livingsasquatch.com
2) www.saveyoursensible.com
3) www.optuswhalesong.com.au
4) www.honeydefender.com
Another Friday afternoon in the Lab. The team has been playing with the Kinect and Unity and now have Proto mirroring your every move.
Check out the video below to see it in action. Click here to read more.
Here’s the latest update to our iPhone Augmented Reality demo. We’ve animated our little “Proto” character to do your bidding. Well, walk to where ever you point at least.
Stay tuned to find out how you can download proto to do your bidding on the iPhone. Click here to read more.
Augmented Reality coming to an iPhone near you! We’ve been toying around with some new technology for the iPhone, and it’s looking like it’s going to be fast and stable. The video below shows the technology running very smoothly on an iPhone 3G! Runs even better on an iPhone 4.
Finally we’ll be able to create 3D Augmented Reality experiences that you can use no matter where you are. Exciting times ahead. Click here to read more.
The team have been working on some more fun applications using Microsoft’s amazing Kinect sensor, combining it with the Unity3D engine to create some novel interactions in a 3D environment.
We now have the ability to recognize when a user’s hand is open or closed, allowing for very intuitive grab controls. The user can literally reach into the scene and grab an object to interact with. Click here to read more.
Here’s a quick look at how we’ve spent our Friday in Boffswana. It’s amazing what you can get done hacking a Kinect for a day.
There’s some adaptive thresholding and blurred blob detection on the raw depth information coming in from the camera, which then passes through the position of a hand to Unity, and lets us throw some (virtual) blocks around. Click here to read more.
We’ve taken our face tracking library a step further, and here we present a fun little soccer/football game based on the technology.
By simply leaning left or right, you control the on screen character as he plays a game of keep-up with Proto. The user is the controller, no keyboard or mouse necessary.
You can play the game using your webcam, or see the video if you don’t have one. Click here to read more.
Our head tracking demo now comes in a 3D flavour further enhancing the experience. If you have some red/cyan glasses floating about, give it a try.
We recommend letting the demo locate your face before putting on your 3D glasses.
Click Here to give it a go! Click here to read more.
We’ve taken a fresh look at headtracking in Flash and implementing a faster, more robust algorithm.
In this demo, you can move your head side to side, up and down as before, but now you can also move closer to the screen and away from the screen, as well as tilt your head.
Click Here to give it a go! Click here to read more.
The Laboratory is where we place technical demonstrations and working models of things we are playing with which you are welcome to use as thought starters.
We have had lots of ideas lately but no time to build them – so we have posted a series of rough sketches.
Click here to read more.
Expanding on our Releas3D augmented reality toolset, we have added a new way to interact with your applications. Now you can use a printed glyph as an input control device. Using a simple game engine and the glyph as an input device we’ve created the ability to control a car via a webcam. In this demo the glyph is embedded in the steering wheel, turning the glyph from left to right steers the car allowing you to control the direction it travels in. Don’t turn too sharply at speed – you may skid. Click here to read more.
Here is a sneak peak demo video of Boffswana’s Augmented Reality technology in it’s standalone (desktop application) form.
As you can see, we are able to push a much larger amount of detail into the scene than our Flash based version, with 30,000+ polygons. The standalone version of Releas3D allows us to produce much richer environments, as well as providing the user a version which they can use without requiring internet connectivity
Stay tuned for more.
While most demos of Augmented Reality show off the 3D side of the technology, it’s also possible to utilise video assets in 2D form, and place them into the 3D world.
Here we have a video playing back on top of the glyph, which conjures up thoughts of holographic displays.
Video combined with Augmented Reality can be used in any number of ways. Play a trailer or promotional video on a print ad, have a spokesman give a presentation or combine video as well as 3D elements to give the scene more depth. The possibilities are definitely wide open when it comes to video combined with Augmented Reality.
UPDATE: Be sure to check out our new DEMO
Here is a tech demo of using flash and a webcam to turn your display into a virtual window into our 3D content.
Be sure your webcam is facing you, then move your head side to side, up and down. You’ll be able to shift the virtual viewpoint by simply using your head.
Using a webcam and flash, we’ve taken ‘Proto’ from the desktop to the desk. A new and exciting way to interact with your flash content. The possibilities are wide open.
Try it for yourself below:
- Make sure you download and print out our NEW symbol
- Allow flash access to your webcam below when it asks (or right click flash and select settings).
- Point your webcam at the printed symbol, ‘Proto’ will appear on top.
Print our Glyph
A prototype for an undisclosed project, utilising a customised version of Papervision. The above is to show that flash is capable of pushing low polygon character models and animation, along with several lighting and texture tricks, that result in a customisable on screen character.
See the demos online:
High Poly
Low Poly
3D model and texture by the talented Kate Moon from Iloura.