Tag Archives: OpenGL

Sensor-based Augmented Reality made simple

I did some content-based augmented reality for Android and my former student developed a sensor-based Augmented Reality App. Thus, I thought I should be able to do the sensor-based stuff as well. I fiddled around a lot to make it work with the canvas but finally I realized that I’m just not able to do it with the Canvas and switched to OpenGL. I attached an Eclipse project with the source code.

Even though I couldn’t find a good example or tutorial it was pretty easy and definitely much easier than going the Canvas way. Basically you have to use the SensorManager to register for accelerometer and magnetometer (that’s the compass) events. You find the code in the class PhoneOrientation. Accelerometer data and compass data can be combined to create a matrix using the code below. I also had to “remap the coordinate system” because by the example uses a portrait mode.

SensorManager.getRotationMatrix(newMat, null, acceleration, orientation);
SensorManager.remapCoordinateSystem(newMat,
		SensorManager.AXIS_Y, SensorManager.AXIS_MINUS_X,
		newMat);

The newMat is a 4×4 matrix as a float array. This matrix must be passed to the OpenGL rendering pipeline and loaded by simply using:

gl.glMatrixMode(GL10.GL_MODELVIEW);
gl.glLoadMatrixf(floatMat, 0);

That’s it basically. As I never learned how to use OpenGL, in particular how to load textures, the project is based on an earlier example that renders the camera image on a cube. The project also uses an Android 2.2 API and reflection to access camera images in a fast way (that’s why it works on Android 2.1). Check out the Eclipse project if you are interested or install the demo on you Android 2.1 device (on cyrket/in the market).

Camera image->NDK->OpenGL texture

Since we are currently working on some augmented reality stuff for Android I need to show the camera image using OpenGL ES. It works great with pure Java if one uses only the grayscale image. However, I needed the color image. The G1’s camera delivers the image in a YUV format while OpenGL only understand RGB images. Unfortunately it is out of question to convert the YUV image to RGB in pure Java for images with 480×320 pixels. Thus, I used the NDK to implement the conversion. The code below does the job. It is based on code provided by Tom Gibara.

void toRGB565(unsigned short *yuvs, int widthIn, int heightIn, unsigned int *rgbs, int widthOut, int heightOut) {
  int half_widthIn = widthIn >> 1;

  //the end of the luminance data
  int lumEnd = (widthIn * heightIn) >> 1;
  //points to the next luminance value pair
  int lumPtr = 0;
  //points to the next chromiance value pair
  int chrPtr = lumEnd;
  //the end of the current luminance scanline
  int lineEnd = half_widthIn;

  int x,y;
  for (y=0;y> 1;
    for (x=0;x> 8) & 0xff;
      Y1 = Y1 & 0xff;
      int Cr = yuvs[chrPtr++];
      int Cb = ((Cr >> 8) & 0xff) - 128;
      Cr = (Cr & 0xff) - 128;

      int R, G, B;
      //generate first RGB components
      B = Y1 + ((454 * Cb) >> 8);
      if (B < 0) B = 0; if (B > 255) B = 255;
      G = Y1 - ((88 * Cb + 183 * Cr) >> 8);
      if (G < 0) G = 0; if (G > 255) G = 255;
      R = Y1 + ((359 * Cr) >> 8);
      if (R < 0) R = 0; if (R > 255) R = 255;
      int val = ((R & 0xf8) << 8) | ((G & 0xfc) << 3) | (B >> 3);

      //generate second RGB components
      B = Y1 + ((454 * Cb) >> 8);
      if (B < 0) B = 0; if (B > 255) B = 255;
      G = Y1 - ((88 * Cb + 183 * Cr) >> 8);
      if (G < 0) G = 0; if (G > 255) G = 255;
      R = Y1 + ((359 * Cr) >> 8);
      if (R < 0) R = 0; if (R > 255) R = 255;
      rgbs[yPosOut+x] = val | ((((R & 0xf8) << 8) | ((G & 0xfc) << 3) | (B >> 3)) << 16);
    }
    //skip back to the start of the chromiance values when necessary
    chrPtr = lumEnd + ((lumPtr  >> 1) / half_widthIn) * half_widthIn;
    lineEnd += half_widthIn;
  }
}

The code is not that optimized at the moment but can process a 480×320 image in ~25ms on my G1 (which is somewhat slow according to my student’s comments). In order to call this function from Java I needed a wrapper with a JNI signature:

/**
 * Converts the input image from YUV to a RGB 5_6_5 image.
 * The size of the output buffer must be at least the size of the input image.
 */
JNIEXPORT void JNICALL Java_de_offis_magic_core_NativeWrapper_image2TextureColor
  (JNIEnv *env, jclass clazz,
  jbyteArray imageIn, jint widthIn, jint heightIn,
  jobject imageOut, jint widthOut, jint heightOut,
  jint filter) {

	jbyte *cImageIn = (*env)->GetByteArrayElements(env, imageIn, NULL);
	jbyte *cImageOut = (jbyte*)(*env)->GetDirectBufferAddress(env, imageOut);


	toRGB565((unsigned short*)cImageIn, widthIn, heightIn, (unsigned int*)cImageOut, widthOut, heightOut);

	(*env)->ReleaseByteArrayElements(env, imageIn, cImageIn, JNI_ABORT);
}

To make it more interesting I added some filter to the camera image. There is a demo app in the market (direct link to the market). I tried to make the whole thing portable but would love to know if it works on other devices like the Motorola Milestone.
Sepia effectBlack & White effectFisheye effectInvert effect

Camera image as an OpenGL texture on top of the native camera viewfinder

I played a bit with the camera viewfinder on my G1 which is usually displayed directly by the camera driver. I hoped that I could synchronize the driver’s camera frame rendering with my own processing and visualization. After an hour or so later I now assume that this is not possible at the moment. However, while playing around I extended the example below as you can see in these screenshots.

OpenGL Camera ScreenshotOpenGL Camera Screenshot

An OpenGL cube textured with the camera frame is rendered on top of the standard camera viewfinder. Thus, the standard camera image in the background is colored while the the cube is only grayscale. I worry that I have to make the OpenGL texture colored as well soon. I also cleaned up the source code a bit by extending GLSurfaceView instead of doing most of the OpenGL stuff myself and using a SurfaceView. I uploaded an updated version to the android market (direct link to the android market). You find the sourceode here.

Showing camera images with OpenGL on Android example

I fiddeled a small example together that shows how to get images from the camera and render them with OpenGL. The example is for Android phones and consists of three classes:

  • GLCamTest is the application’s main Activity. It does nothing special apart from putting the app in fullscreen mode and creating a GLLayer object as well as a Preview object.
  • The Preview class handles the camera. In particular, the method setPreviewCallback is used to receive camera images. The camera images are not processed in this class but delivered directly to the GLLayer. This class itself does not display the camera images.
  • GLLayer uses OpenGL ES to render the camera’s viewfinder image on the screen. Unfortunately I don’t know much about OpenGL (ES). The code is mostly copied from some examples. The only interesting stuff happens in the main loop (the run method) and the onPreviewFrame method.

Furthermore, we have the BooleanLock class which is completely boring. I uploaded the eclipse project containing the source code. I have only tested it on the emulator and with my tuned G1 not sure if it works with normal devices.

I just tested it on a normal G1. Performance is horrible; the Garbage Collector jumps in a few times per second and stops the video. It’s because of the Camera Preview Callback memory Issue. Unfortunately I assume that this can’t be changed without touching the firmware. I also uploaded the example to the Android Market.