After many obstacles and a lot of configuring I have got my piece to what I wanted from the beginning!!!
All of the little bugs are fixed and everything is working well, I now just need to configure the projector to the screen so that it is even all over to maximise visibility.
On the top of each cube, I will be putting the engraved perspex, which represents each planet with an outline.
These are the markers that will be used to change my Planets. There will be 5 markers for each Planet and 5 Planets in all. I will be making a cube for each planet, with one marker on each side and an outline of the planet on the last side.
I have almost finished the coding. All of the Planets have been added, as well as the Comet, which will fly past the background at random intervals. I have also included a black hole which will shrink and leave nothing behind.
The image above is a screenshot of my final background. The small stars pulse slowly. I have included the constellations of Orion.
I have made some arrows that will appear around the markers for a short period of time. These are in response to the fact that not every one understood that the markers were supposed to rotated.
I’m looking at star constellations at the moment. I want to add a few little touches to the background like glowing stars and maybe a galaxy somewhere or other.
The bottom image might be the background to my final piece.
These pictures and video link show people interacting with my universe. Although they had trouble with identifying which marker did what (these markers were used for another project so I will be producing my own) they didn’t have too much of a problem with the controls.
These screen prints show a more refined version of my experimentation. I have gotten to a level whereby you can insert a planet, change the colour, size, orbit radius and position.
I have asked a few people to use the programme and a few issues have been raised. One is that it is unclear that you have to rotate the marker in order for the planet to react accordingly. Another is that some of the different changes aren’t satisfying enough, I may think about adding arrows to the markers themselves, and also sounds to increase the feeling of doing something as you rotate the marker.
I have almost finished my experimentation process. However, I am in a position to start to substitute some of the imagery into the programme.
The top image shows the fiducial marker which will trigger the rotation of the planet when turned clockwise or anti-clockwise. The bottom image shows that the planet’s colour and size can be changed using different markers.
I will be making four planets in all, each with five different editable qualities. These qualities will be the size, rotation, colour, amount of orbiting planets and finally a marker which will send a comet towards the planets, destroying it.
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