Cam manipulation software/program
Author
I know this is not the place for this, but I didnt knew where else to ask. I need to create a system to manipulate web cam images in windows , what I need to do is to take a picture with a digi cam, replace the background (blue screen is available), be able to change it to black and white, add extra images to put on top of the picture, (like hats) etc. This may sound pretty simple to do using photoshop or similar, but the thing is that it must be usable by kids, meaning, large buttons, very intuitive and easy to use, etc. Of course to top it all, deadline is getting very near.
Im running out of ideas, these are some of the problems I have ran into.
Flash mx: Nice and easy to work with, but no image manipulation, it is posible to use a webcam but is not possible to even copy the image. (at least as far as I know)
Director MX: well is a nice program, but I have little experience with it, besides, I havent found how to link the camera to it.
Visual basic: Havent tried it yet, Im researching on how to link the camera with it first.
Visual C++: Great choice, but considering the time I have left, doing the entire interface in it with custom buttons instead of traditional window buttons could be pretty difficult.
Visual C++ with open gl, or directx , Pretty probable I could create the buttons as overlays or clkickable polys. unfortunately I dont have the algorithms for replacing the blue color background in a texture,in addition I dont know how to link the cam ( yet)
Buying the software.. well if it fits my budget (which is low, since I dont get advances) I would be glad to. Specially if I can design my own skin for the buttons.
Well thats the situation, I would apreciate any help in this subject, image mainuplation algos that I could implement, ways to take the image from the camera, a link to a program that already does this, etc.
Thanks and sorry for the long post.
visual c++ might not be as comfortable as the c++ builder (or maybe visual basic, though i never saw it), but it still allows to "click" yourself an interface. regarding the webcam stuff game programming gems 2 had an article about using a webcam in games along with some sourcecode. though this might be a little expensive for just that.
as soon as you have the picture in memory just going over the pixels and replacing them with pixels from a background depending on their color shouldnt be a problem.
as soon as you have the picture in memory just going over the pixels and replacing them with pixels from a background depending on their color shouldnt be a problem.
This is much easier to do than you think. 
Using the Video For Windows library (VFW32.dll??) you can specify all kinds of capture parameters. You can get your frame capture working with less than a page of code.
What you''ll want to do is setup a frame callback. This is a function that gets called everytime there is a new image available. In this function you will have access to the image data. Since you know the width, height, can bits per pixel, you can easily run your image manipulation calls on it. (ie: replace blue with at x,y with a pixel in another bitmap at x,y).
To handle your custom buttons I would use bitmaps for each button, and look for mousedown/mouseup events..
If you avoid most of the windows api stuff you can get something up and running in no time, with minimal code.
Honestly I would use C++ myself, but since you''re in a crunch you might be better off using VB.
Will
P.S. Are you doing this for fun, or is it a commercial product?
Using the Video For Windows library (VFW32.dll??) you can specify all kinds of capture parameters. You can get your frame capture working with less than a page of code.
What you''ll want to do is setup a frame callback. This is a function that gets called everytime there is a new image available. In this function you will have access to the image data. Since you know the width, height, can bits per pixel, you can easily run your image manipulation calls on it. (ie: replace blue with at x,y with a pixel in another bitmap at x,y).
To handle your custom buttons I would use bitmaps for each button, and look for mousedown/mouseup events..
If you avoid most of the windows api stuff you can get something up and running in no time, with minimal code.
Honestly I would use C++ myself, but since you''re in a crunch you might be better off using VB.
Will
P.S. Are you doing this for fun, or is it a commercial product?
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