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Adobe Atmosphere Tutorial by Staffan Nilsson (aka 3hm):
How to Implement a Webcam in your
Adobe Atmosphere Environment
[camera zooms into 3hm sitting in a comfy sofa]
[light is slowly turned on]
[cue 'soothing music']
[action!]
Hi,
My name is 3hm. Some of you may recognize me from worlds like "AtmoCinema" and the award winning "36 Sleepy Avenue". I was very excited when the Zombies decided to add the function to implement video as a texture on objects and I soon started to experiment with this. I have always been fascinated with video on the internet and the idea of having a live stream in a world has been haunting me for months, maybe even years. Now I have found an easy way to do this and here's my tutorial!
To make a long tutorial short, this is what we will do:
Broadcast video and audio using Windows Media Encoder a webcam and microphone
Edit a texture in Atmosphere
Publish the world
It’s as simple as that! Now here’s how to do it:
1. Buy and install a webcam
Try to find a good one with as high resolution as you can afford.
2. Download and install Windows Media Encoder
http://download.microsoft.com/download/8/1/f/81f9402f-efdd-439d-b2a4-089563199d47/WMEncoder.exe
This is the software we use to broadcast the video and audio. It’s free and about 9,5 MB.
3. Start Windows Media Encoder and choose "Broadcast a live event" in "New session" and click "OK".
4. In the next screen you need to choose what device to use as a video and audio source.
5. On the following screen you select "Pull from the encoder" (if you are fortunate to have a Windows Media Server, you select the first one).
6. This is where it gets interesting! On the next screen you will see two addresses. The first one is the one we will use since it is the public one and it looks something like this: http://172.16.207.103:8080/ You can choose any port you want to use but I urge you to keep 8080 as default. Copy the address to the Notepad, you will need this very soon.
7. When you click "Next" you will see different bit rates for the video and audio. I suggest you leave this for now since it’s set to the best appearance. You can experiment with different bit rates later to find the one that looks best. Modem users might want to use a lower bit rate like 54-70 Kbps.
8. "Next" and the most important screen of the all reveals itself. This is where we name the video file/texture. (The thing is that you really don’t need to do this if you are broadcasting outside of Atmosphere but we do it because Atmosphere needs to know the exact filename as we will use it as a texture.) Select "Archive a copy..." and click browse and choose where you want to put it. Make sure that "Windows Media Files *.wmv, *.wma" is chosen and write the name of the file. Ex "webcam" and click "OK"
9. Click next and write all the info you want.
10. On the next screen you will see a summary of everything we've done. Do not check "Begin broadcasting...". First we need to fix a couple of things. Still with me? Click "Finish".
Now you will see what the webcam sees and this is what will be shown in your world. Cool huh?!
11. Remember when we selected "Archive a copy..."? This will put a file with everything you broadcast and the file will be huge after a night of non-stop broadcasting! That’s why we need to fix that. Click "Properties" and select the "Output" tab. Select "Limit size" and write "1024 KB". This way we have limited the filesize but the broadcast will continue. We do this to fool Atmosphere to think we are using a huge video file as a texture. Hehehe...
12. Now start up dear old Atmosphere and your world. Add a texture to your library and add that texture to the face of an object where you want the video to be shown. Do not add the texture to the whole object if you don’t really want to because it will be confusing later if you want to delete the video.
13. In the "Inspector", "Texture", you will see an address to the texture you've added. Delete that one and add the address to your webcam (you have it in Notepad) and finally you add the filename at the end of the address, like this: http://172.16.207.103:8080/webcam.wmv It is important to select "Absolute Path" in the "Texture" tab.
14. Go back to Windows Media Encoder and press "Start encoding". From now on you are broadcasting everything you say and do in front of the cam, so fix that hair and smile!
15. Almost done! Just publish the world and try it out! Impress your friends and make your own TV shows.
Have fun!
You can view an example of this in Staffan's AtmoKaraoke bar at
http://www.stason.se/atmo/karaoke/.
Please be sure to check out Staffan's website at
http://www.stason.se/atmo.php.
To view more great worlds that Staffan Nilsson's has built
Click Here.
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