BePuppit: BodyPuppetry is an interactive application that explores the potential of the body motion to drive virtual puppets in particular silhouettes.
Users are challenged to deconstruct their bodies and use it as a marionette controller to drive  silhouettes. Because this puppets are in two dimensions the player needs to find the body poses that work best with the puppets. I call this search for the best pose the distance of manipulation. The more direct is the manipulation (when the manipulated subject mirrors the puppeteer) the more acting skills are needed, puppetry skills are needed when this distance increases.

BODYPUPPETRY is part of a digital puppetry research called Virtual Marionette.

BodyPuppetry challenges the participant to use his body as a puppetry controller, giving life to a virtual silhouette through acting.

Inspired by traditional marionette methods, such as shadow puppetry, the project goal is to study novel interfaces as digital puppetry controllers for performance animation. In this particular case the challenge was to deconstruct our body as if it was a marionette controller to give life to non-human silhouettes figures. There is also a human-like 3D model for comparison purposes. This project was used for an experimental study with the purpose of understanding how non-expert artists would behave with their bodies when challenged to control silhouette figures.

Implementation
This application was developed for Microsoft Kinect device using the OpenNI wrapper for Unity. NITE gestures were used to drive a virtual cursor allowing to control the interface with the hands. (in this release, only the Windows version work with NITE)

Requirements
– PC/MAC with OpenNI drivers (version 1.5)
– Microsoft Kinect sensor

If you need the drivers you can download the Zigfu for Mac or Windows available on the file section