Cem Alemdar and Sylvia Lin – Final Project Concept

We have several ideas of what we want to do in terms of the final project. We know we would like to use heat sensor and button to control the animation. Additionally, it is also in our interests to incorporate audio control as well as computer vision as another set of parameter for input. However, we are still unsure of which idea is the most feasible.

  • A turtle island rendered using a 3D model in FBX/GLTF format. The idea is that the user will be able to have the experience as a submarine and an aircraft. So at first the user might think it is an island and by holding the heat sensor the scale will increase. Once the button is pressed, the user will be exposed to the underwater view and realize that it is actually a turtle. We have found a free-to-download version online but we are having difficulties importing the texture files so we can transform the file format into OBJ or DAE, which are the only 3D model file formats Max can take. We can use sound files to mimic that submarine/aircraft feeling and enhance the overall experience and may even use motion scrubber to control the speed. The metaphor here is how the turtle looks like an island.
  • We may also create a game for turtle hatching. “Research shows that if a turtle’s eggs incubate below 81.86 Fahrenheit , the turtle hatchlings will be male.” We will still be using the heat sensor to mimic the climate change and global warming effect, so as the temperature gets higher (there will be a threshold), eventually there will be less and less eggs that can be hatched because of the imbalance male-female ratio. The ideal temperature needs to be controlled carefully by holding and releasing the heat sensor. The metaphor here is how the human hand’s control is like the anthropogenic effect of global warming.
  • Also in the form of a game, we are thinking to create some educational experience about ocean pollution. So there will be a lot of trash on the beach and the user needs to pick up the trash as soon as possible otherwise as the trash gets closer and closer, eventually flowing into the ocean, the trash will become dead bodies of marine animals, such as dead whales, dead fish, etc. The metaphor here is how trash becomes dead bodies of marine animals.

We are pretty confident about the audio control, computer vision as well as the game aspect. We are mostly worries about how the 3D models we download can be imported into Max and hopefully we will get our questions addressed in Thursday’s class.

Our vision is overall very centered around the ocean. We have the Arduino component working already and our next step would be to identify the best project idea among the three mentioned above.

Here is the demo:

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