Virtual Marionette

Théâtre de Guignol numérique.

Guignol went to the virtual world. An impressive virtual puppet play developed by Wizarbox in 2009 for the Futur en Seine, an international digital festival in France.

They developed a virtual puppetry system using Wiimotes and Nunchucks as digital controllers plus voice for lip-sync.

Replacing the glove puppets by the video-game controller technologies, this theatre puts in scene virtual characters handled by the voice and the gestures of the puppeteer.

To meet one of the traditions of Guignol, a theatrical character created in the 19th century, Wizarbox developed 3D CGI characters that were very similar to the original ones for better identification. The way they were controlled was also similar to the way puppeteers handle Guignol puppets.
the public also had the opportunity to influence the story by interacting vocally with virtual characters.

Henson Digital puppetry studio

The state of the art of digital puppetry in television.

Henson company inherit the vision of  is master puppeteer, Jim Henson. They are  exploring new techniques to create performance animation and real-time shows.

They mix the optical with Waldo´s motion capture  for body and hand performance.

Delicode release NI Mate 1.9 version, a great tool for digital puppetry.

It captures Microsoft Kinect sends the information via OSC or MIDI to animation, sound and game applications.

The use of virtual marionettes in television begun with Jim Henson with Waldo.

Fraggle Rock was a television series that applied some of the most advanced puppetry technology

The Doozers characters were Animatronics controlled by remote

Caitlin Boyle and Asa Foster developed We Be Monsters for the Interactive Art & Computational Design  course in Carnegie Mellon University in 2011.

This is a great project that shows how two puppeteers can manipulate a virtual monster.

https://vimeo.com/20367106

In the beginning of 2013 Seth Hunter made a very interesting and helpful video showing different digital puppetry methods to achieve performance animation.

Friedrich Kirchner is developing since 2009 an amazing open-source 3D real-time animation tool for easy sketching.

Instead of the standard modeling process, the user just draws the objects or characters in the canvas or scan them from a Microsoft Kinect obtaining a very peculiar expression.

By presenting a node-based system the user can map interfaces for live performances or trigger sequences.

This is a great tool for creatives that can be used in many scenarios, like digital puppetry or even to build presentations.

Movie Sandbox site: http://www.moviesandbox.net

Movie Sandbox digital puppetry example using arduino to connect to a real sock interface

Another great example from 2008 is the manipulation of a virtual marionette using GameTrak and Wiimote

Developed in 2012 | Digital puppetry | Interactive installation

Puppet Parade is a magnificent good looking interactive installation developed by Emily Gobeille and Theo Watson.  Microsoft Kinect captures the motion of the hand of the digital puppeteer which drives a very awesome bird. They develop and implement a method to recognize the opening and closing of the hand that controls the mouth of the bird.

Puppet parade link: http://www.creativeapplications.net/openframeworks/puppet-parade-openframeworks/

There are many novel approaches based on microsoft kinect to animate real puppets using body motion:

Robot Kinect

Hanson RoboKind Zeno R-30 Kinect Demo

Whole-body Imitation of Human Motions with a Nao Humanoid