Qudi LED Emotion Face Masks: Wearing Your Heart on Your Face

Have trouble expressing your emotions? I’m with you; my couples counselor says it’s something I really need to work on. And here to help is the Qudi Mask, a full face mask consisting of translucent ski-style goggles with LED eye rings and a bottom portion with 199 smart LED lights for better expressing yourself. RIGHT NOW, I’M ANGRY. Just kidding, only tired.

The $289 mask is available in black and white and is controlled via a smartphone app that allows you to choose the mode and display and LED color. In emotion mode, the mask displays the emoticon of your choice (smile, love, shocked, confused, angry, and cat — the most important emotion of all) and animates the mouth to match your speech. The emotions can also be attached to triggers (e.g., nodding yes or shaking your head no) so they can be changed without having to access your phone. That’s a good thing too because I can never find mine.

In addition to emotion mode, there are also 25+ preset animations, an equalizer mode that responds to audio, and a text mode that allows you to display any message you want. The Qudi’s battery lasts for between three and four hours of use and takes approximately 1.5 hours to fully charge. How are you going to use yours? I’m going to use mine to improve my relationship with my wife. Mostly by using the cat emoticon and pretending I’m a cat. She loves cats.

[via Man of Many]

Nintendo’s Flipnote Studio 3D brings extra dimension to 3DS doodled GIFs

Nintendo's DSi Moving Memo Pad adds 3D to your doodled GIFs

Nintendo's Flipnote Studio (aka Moving Memo Pad) brought shareable animated sketches to users when the wildly popular free app first launched for the DSi console many moons ago. Now, Nintendo's brought it up to date for Japanese 3DS users with Flipnote Studio 3D, supporting stereoscopic 3D images with three layers of depth along with six colors. As before, wannabe animators in that country will be able to share their artwork in AVI or GIF formats with friends on the 3DS network at no charge, or post to a larger audience on the Hatena World Flipnote Gallery for a fee. You can check the video after the break for more, but it would help to understand Japanese -- or be able to parse YouTube's inscrutable translation.

Update: We've replaced the Japanese YouTube video with a new English version after the break, so all the aforementioned parsing and translating is no longer needed.

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Source: Nintendo (YouTube)

This Is How Keys Work

We always look at lockpicking tools and rank them right up there alongside magician’s tools; it’s hard to understand how they work if you don’t get how locks themselves work. And then a little GIF comes by and suddenly it all makes sense. Oh, we’re not saying we’d be any more able to pick a lock now that we’ve seen this animation, because knowledge doesn’t equal skill, but we’re sure happy we finally get it. Aren’t you?

VIA [ Gizmodo ]

Fabricated: Scientists develop method to synthesize the sound of clothing for animations (video)

Fabricated Scientists synthesize the sound of moving clothing, but you'll still need the Wilhelm Scream

Developments in CGI and animatronics might be getting alarmingly realistic, but the audio that goes with it often still relies on manual recordings. A pair of associate professors and a graduate student from Cornell University, however, have developed a method for synthesizing the sound of moving fabrics -- such as rustling clothes -- for use in animations, and thus, potentially film. The process, presented at SIGGRAPH, but reported to the public today, involves looking into two components of the natural sound of fabric, cloth moving on cloth, and crumpling. After creating a model for the energy and pattern of these two aspects, an approximation of the sound can be created, which acts as a kind of "road map" for the final audio.

The end result is created by breaking the map down into much smaller fragments, which are then matched against a database of similar sections of real field-recorded audio. They even included binaural recordings to give a first-person perspective for headphone wearers. The process is still overseen by a human sound engineer, who selects the appropriate type of fabric and oversees the way that sounds are matched, meaning it's not quite ready for prime time. Understandable really, as this is still a proof of concept, with real-time operations and other improvements penciled in for future iterations. What does a virtual sheet being pulled over an imaginary sofa sound like? Head past the break to hear it in action, along with a presentation of the process.

Continue reading Fabricated: Scientists develop method to synthesize the sound of clothing for animations (video)

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Fabricated: Scientists develop method to synthesize the sound of clothing for animations (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 26 Sep 2012 23:40:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Scientists create simulation of the universe, reenact 14 billion years in a few months (video)

Scientists create simulation of the universe, reenact 14 billion years in a few months

Are animations of Curiosity's Mars landing not enough to feed your space exploration appetite? Try this on for size: a group of scientists from the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics and the Heidelberg Institute for Theoretical Studies have generated what's billed as a full-fledged simulation of the universe. Arepo, the software behind the sim, took the observed afterglow of the big bang as its only input and sped things up by 14 billion years. The result was a model of the cosmos peppered with realistically depicted galaxies that look like our own and those around us. Previous programs created unseemly blobs of stars instead of the spiral galaxies that were hoped for because they divided space into cubes of fixed size and shape. Arepo's secret to producing accurate visualizations is its geometry; a grid that moves and flexes to mirror the motions of dark energy, dark matter, gasses and stars. Video playback of the celestial recreation clocks in at just over a minute, but it took Harvard's 1,024-core Odyssey super computer months to churn out. Next on the group's docket is tackling larger portions of the universe at a higher resolution. Head past the jump for the video and full press release, or hit the source links below for the nitty-gritty details in the team's trio of scholarly papers.

Continue reading Scientists create simulation of the universe, reenact 14 billion years in a few months (video)

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Scientists create simulation of the universe, reenact 14 billion years in a few months (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 17 Aug 2012 07:09:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink PhysOrg  |  sourceHarvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, Cornell University Library (1), (2), (3)  | Email this | Comments

Microsoft shows devs the secrets to creating fluid animations in Windows 8 Metro apps

Microsoft shows devs the secrets to creating fluid animations in Windows 8 Metro apps

As Microsoft brings its Metro style from the mobile world back to the desktop in Windows 8, it's also focusing on keeping the smooth animated transitions users have gotten used to on certain mobile platforms intact. A new post on the Windows 8 app developer blog breaks down exactly what devs can do to achieve a consistent and fluid style in their apps even when they're using the new look. Unless you're planning on getting your hands dirty with code there's not much to see other than the (incredibly brief) animation sample embedded after the break. Still, Microsoft says following its animation guidelines should be enough to keep GPU-powered animations flowing smoothly whether they're custom built or based on its own presets. Reactions to the new face of Windows have been decidedly mixed since the Consumer Preview launched, we'll see if this work pays off in third party apps that make the transition worthwhile.

Continue reading Microsoft shows devs the secrets to creating fluid animations in Windows 8 Metro apps

Microsoft shows devs the secrets to creating fluid animations in Windows 8 Metro apps originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 02 May 2012 16:54:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Animated video shows Orion spacecraft in orbit

Animated video shows Orion spacecraft in orbit

NASA may have pushed back the Orion spacecraft's test flight to 2014, but you can get an early glimpse of the capsule in orbit thanks to this animated video from Full Werks studio. You'll see the capsule circle the planet before touching down in the Pacific -- all with a much better view than you can expect when that actual launch date rolls around. The animation features audio clips from the original Apollo and, as any NASA-related video worth its salt should, includes a vintage voiceover from space sage Carl Sagan.

Continue reading Animated video shows Orion spacecraft in orbit

Animated video shows Orion spacecraft in orbit originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 29 Apr 2012 11:08:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |  sourceFull {Circle} Werks  | Email this | Comments