Innovation at its Best: The Story Behind Enter Black’s Project

An augmented reality photobooth | Enter Black

Computer vision | OpenCV | Projection mapping

Project

Enter Black had produced a project called the “Metamorpheur”. This was a Photo Booth in which a video projector projected filters (like Instagram filters) directly onto people’s faces. Flynx was to bring this project to V2 by adding face tracking so that the projection would follow people’s movements.

Enter Black’s Metamorphor

Enter Black is an artistic collective dedicated to developing immersive experiences. From projection mapping in museums to the production of audiovisual experiences and VJING, Enter Black is a Paris-based start-up that stands out for its innovation.

It is in this quest for innovation that Flynx has brought its experience.

Technical issues

Face tracking

Facial tracking is carried out using an algorithm based on machine learning. It allows us to obtain 478 facial landmarks. The difficulty in tracking here lay in two points: The darkness caused by the photo booth. The image recovered by the camera is very dark. Detection when a filter is projected onto the face. Projection of the filter greatly blurs the camera image and analysis is more complicated. To limit these risks, the first two weeks of development were devoted to benchmarking different algorithms in these complex environmental conditions.

Camera and projector calibration

To transform the pixel position of the face as seen by the camera into a position in the image projected by the video projector, the camera and video projector had to be calibrated to determine the translation and rotation between them.

We developed tools to perform these various calibrations. This was the crucial and most complex part of the project. Without these algorithms, the projection would never have been properly aligned with the face.

Control system

To control the Metamorpheur, both for its configuration and for changing filters, we have set up a very simple web interface, but above all a complete REST API giving access to the smallest settings. Enter Black can easily integrate this API into its control applications.

Conclusion

This is a very interesting project, a mixture of algorithms and projection mapping, the kind of projects we really like at Flynx. You’ll be able to see this project in exhibitions around Paris, particularly at 104! If you’d like to find out more about this kind of project, don’t hesitate to contact us and have a look at similar projects on the blog.

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