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victorqx
05-08-2012, 08:29 AM
Hi all,

A quick question that has me stumped for the entire afternoon. I'm using a Kinect for head tracking and am experimenting with gesture control for moving about. I have a small CAVE (3mx3m) defined where the Kinect is at point (0, 1.6, 2).

I want to find out where a user is pointing to, so that I can move the caveorigin towards that point. My idea was to draw a line from a users hand along the direction of their underarm (using the LEFTHAND and LEFTELBOW markers from the Kinect to get the direction) and find out where it intersects with the x,y plane on z=2.

So, I create a plane(), call setNormal([0, 0, -1]) and setPos([0, 0, 2]). Then I wanted to call the .intersect() method, but that doesn't seem to give me the results I'm looking for. The error message mentions that I need to supply 6 parameters. I've tried supplying [x1,y1,z1,x2,y2,z2] (in various combinations) and [x1,y1,z1,x2-x1,y2-y1,z2-z1] (in various combinations), but the resulting intersection point don't seem to have anything to do with the position of my arm.

Could anyone give me the precise parameters I would have to enter for the .intersect() method of a Plane()? Unfortunately the function specification only mentions 'line' and the actual implementation is in a .dll, so not that easy to get to.

Thanks!

Victor

Jeff
05-08-2012, 11:26 AM
It looks for two lists:

lineBegin
[x,y,z] position of begin point of intersection line.

lineEnd
[x,y,z] position of end point of intersection line.

In the following example code a ball is placed at the intersection point on the quad in the direction the user is looking:
import viz
import vizact
import vizmat
viz.go()

dojo = viz.addChild('dojo.osgb')

import vizshape
quad = vizshape.addQuad(pos=[0,1.5,2],color=viz.SKYBLUE)
ball = vizshape.addSphere(radius=0.02,color=viz.ORANGE)

def showIntersection():
lineBegin = viz.MainView.getPosition()
vector = viz.MainView.getMatrix().getForward()
lineEnd = vizmat.MoveAlongVector(lineBegin,vector,10)
i = quad.intersect(lineBegin,lineEnd)
point = i.point
ball.setPosition(point)

vizact.onkeydown(' ',showIntersection)

victorqx
05-11-2012, 05:34 AM
Hi Jeff,

Thanks, I got it working. It helps to know that the intersect function expects two points. Also, using the MoveAlongVector function means that there is always an intersect between the lineBegin, lineEnd and the object that is to be intersected.

What didn't help was that I had forgot to use the calibration for the Kinect that was in place for headtracking also for the calibration of limbs. After adding that calibration information it now works fantastic!

Thanks for the help!

Victor