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SSTT Visualizer - User Manual

Submitted by Hartmut on Thu, 02/12/2009 - 09:16

Introduction

SSTT visualizer is built on top of the SSTT library and the OpenSceneGraph library. It is a general purpose Augmented Reality viewer with a few extras which allow simple interaction techniques.

Configuration

The viewer using a simple text file for configuration. Finding the configuration file is easy; on Windows the file is in the sstt folder and on Mac OS X you need to open the ssttviz application bundle (just right-click on the application icon and choose "Show Package Contents" from the pop up menu and browse to Contents/Resources/sstt) and look into the Resource branch. The file is called config.txt a truly simple format.

 # a comment
fiducial sstt/sstt_interactive_fiducial.bmp 52 52
translate 0 0 0
rotate 0 0 1 90
model /Users/seichter/Models/j9_vsab_3ds/J9-vsab.3ds 0.1

As of version 1.1.x this is what these commands stand for. The commands are sequential and need to start on the first character in the line.

  • Comments can start with # or ;
  • fiducial describes the actual marker as an image - at the moment only Windows BMP will work. The two numbers after the filename, which is a relative path are describing the size in millimeters. The order is height than width.
  • translate will move the object on top of the fiducial in the local coordinate system
  • rotate will rotate the file in the coordinate system after being moved. The description is in Quaternian form - first the three components of the vector around the rotation takes place and the fourth component is the rotation in degree
  • model will add a model file - the number after the file name is a scale factor.

You can repeat this block multiple times. Depending how different your fiducials are SSTT can distinguish a large number of markers.

Fiducials

Creating fiducials is straight forward. Though, SSTT doesn't need a black border like ARToolKit the border needs to be clearly defined. The example marker (watch badge) is a good example. Additionally the fiducial needs to have a interior of highly contrasted imagery.

Multiple Fiducials

The fiducials need to be very distinguishable generally, and only about eight will work with the default settings hard coded in the application. In the configuration you only repeat the configuration as described above.