Digital Staircase Blog

Next Chapter

Dear Digital Staircase customers, followers, and supporters,

Hard to believe that it's been 3 years since we started Digital Staircase.  As with any startup, there have been ups and downs, but we've always had a blast working with you all to create new graphics apps and tools that make the joy of visual computing accessible.  We're announcing today that we're joining Facebook, where we'll help to bring these kind of mobile innovations to a broader audience.  Many things may change, but our dedication to immersive experiences will not.  

In a couple weeks (around 12/05/2011), we will be closing down Digital Staircase as a standalone entity and will remove all iOS products from the Apple iTunes store.  Those of you who own apps (MovieCam, SmartSplice, StereoCam, etc) will still be able to use them on your current device.  Please look out for new innovations to be added to Facebook.

Thanks for all the support, and feel free to contact us at support@digitalstaircase.com for more suggestions, comments, and feedback. We're always looking for ways to improve the user experience.

Thanks,
The Digital Staircase Team

Announcing MovieCam 2.0 for iPad

MovieCam for iPad 2 has just reached a major milestone.
Version 2.0 is out and features three huge updates:
1) An all-new ergonomic user interface that makes video recording even easier;
2) 9 new special effects to enhance your videos with even more creative art styles.
3) Ability to take quick photo snapshots.

1.  New User Interface

The user interface for MovieCam has been completely redesigned to make shooting video and editing effects even easier.  Here's a screenshot of the iPad in landscape orientation (in right-handed mode).

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Notice that instead of having a single bar of options at the bottom, the user interface buttons are divided into left and right sections on the sides of the device.  This makes it easier to adjust settings and control recording while holding the device in a comfortable manner.  When shooting for extended periods of time, it is much easier to hold the device with a hand on each side instead of holding it by one hand so that you can press buttons with the other.

2. 9 New Special Effects

A second screen of 9 special effects has been added (for a total of 18 effects presets).

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Posterize - Color quantization style often used for making posters.
Fisheye - A wide-angle lens effect (similar to looking at the reflection on an orb or looking through a peephole)
Halftone - Simulation of color tones using dots (common to print media like comics)
1920's - Black and white vintage look.  Option to add color and tinting.
Parchment Sketch - Pencil sketch on parchment.
Tilt-Shift - Macro-like effect for artistic miniaturization.
Radial Focus - Radially control vignette, blur, and desaturation.
Thermal & Night Vision - Infra-red view style.
Cartoon - Salient edges with water coloring.

3. Quick Photo Snapshots

MovieCam now supports photo snapshots.  Tap on the camera button next to the record button and you're done!

MovieCam Go for iPhone & iPod Touch

Finally, the most powerful camcorder app for the iPad comes to the iPhone 4 & iPod Touch (4th gen)!

Meerkat-moviecam

MovieCam Go has been optimized specifically to run on the iPhone 4 and iPod Touch (4th gen).  Bring the power of the original MovieCam iPad app with you wherever you go.

Check out the new videos on the Digital Staircase YouTube channel:

Meanwhile, the original MovieCam iPad app has been featured by Apple in "What's Hot" in Photography and "New & Noteworthy" across all categories.  Fans have pushed the app into the top 5 Photography apps on the iTunes app store.  Thanks for the support and help us keep spreading the word.  

More exciting updates to come, so keep an eye out for them!

iPhone 4/iPod Touch (4th generation) app:

Red_flowers

 

Flamingos

MovieCam camcorder app news

Thanks to everyone who has supported our app and given us feedback!  

We've just submitted an update for review, so with your help the app will only get better.
New features include:
  • Exposure control - tap screen to auto-expose point
  • Improved 720p performance
  • More automatic protections against data loss (e.g., out of disk space, out of battery, or accidental shutdowns when saving)
  • Additional slider controls

Word on the Internet:

"This app is tremendously fun and easy to use. The price is right and the features are plentiful. If you have an iPad 2, you will want this app."
 -- AppAdvice.com

"What I liked: Everything. This app is a lot of fun. If you use the video function of your iPad 2, or would like to, then this app is worth buying..." 
-- PadGadget.com

"100% must have photography app!!! With excellent in-built features and movie-like effects, this is one of the best iPad applications." 
-- Robert Fisher (on TopAppReviews101.com)

Featured by Apple as "New & Noteworthy" in Photography.

If you haven't seen MovieCam yet, check it out at:

MovieCam = Movie Magic!

Moviecam-splash
Update (July 7, 2011): MovieCam is now featured  in the "New & Noteworthy" section of the Apple iTunes store (under Photography)!


MovieCam easily serves as a replacement for the iPad 2 camcorder.  Use it to take all your videos!  It improves on the iPad 2 camcorder by providing useful-but-missing features such as 8x digital zoom and contrast enhancement.  

 

Furthermore, MovieCam additionally allows you to stylize your videos so that you can achieve your own artistic vision.  Bestow your movies with the look and feel of films such as 300 and Sin City without the hours of post-processing afterward. 


Gothic-comic-inks


Each effect provides a set of sliders to adjust the effect in real-time so that you can see exactly what will be recorded.  You can even adjust the effects while recording to make a black and white scene gradually saturate with color or make a red coat stand out against the monochromatic backdrop.  Unlock many more possibilities with MovieCam’s effects options.


Gothic-comic-inks-red-car


MovieCam includes a number of presets for you to choose from (oil painting, newscast, romantic, vintage, “normal”, golden red, gothic, moonlit, video game).  View the live video feed as it would appear with each effect and choose your favorite!


Img_0148

 

MovieCam is currently available only for the iPad 2. 

You can find it on iTunes at:

http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/moviecam/id446619305?mt=8

Keep on the lookout for the upcoming iPhone 4 version as well.

 

Check out the sample video as well:


 

 

Vintage-baseball

 

 

Moonlit-sunflowers

3D Photography

Photographs are immensely valuable in helping us relive moments in time.  However, as flat depictions of reality, traditional photographs fail to capture a level of immersion that comes only from actually inhabiting a three-dimensional environment. 

Enter three-dimensional (3D) photography.  The goal is to augment the standard photograph with depth information.  These 3D photos can then be displayed on upcoming 3D televisions and other 3D display technology.  Perhaps surprisingly, these 3D photos can also be seen without the aid of additional hardware!  One need simply learn an appropriate viewing technique (more on this in a bit). 

We developed Stereocam to aid in the capture of 3D photos.  These photos are displayed as stereo image pairs (or stereograms).  In stereo image pairs, the left and right halves look similar, but are subtly different in important ways.  In "parallel" stereo image pairs, the left eye is meant to stare at the left half and the right eye is meant to stare at the right half (often thought of as focusing on a point behind the image).  In "cross-eyed" stereo image pairs, the left eye is meant to stare at the right image and the right eye is meant to stare at the left image (often thought of as focusing on a point in front of the image).  The examples below are all "parallel" stereo images.  They have also been reduced in resolution for better web viewing (Stereocam saves in high resolution).

Many first-time viewers find it helpful to start by viewing the stereo image pairs up close (nose might even touch the display screen) and then gradually move away while trying to fuse the two halves into a single image in the middle.  When successful, a third image will appear in between the two halves and should appear in full 3D. 

For more information, see the following references:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stereogram
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stereoscopy

Enjoy these Stereocam-captured photos!



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Making of the Firebeast (from A Wizard's Odyssey)


Firebeast


The firebeast is one of the more formidable monsters in the labyrinth stages of A Wizard's Odyssey.  As potential heroes quickly find out, it is invulnerable to fire-based attacks.  In fact, only water-based spells can stop the firebeast's relentless charges. 

The picture above shows progressive stages in the monster's design.  The leftmost rendering is a wireframe rendering, which shows how the firebeast's surface has been divided up into sets of triangles.  Every character in the game is first described as a set of triangles because modern graphics cards are very efficient at drawing them. 

The center rendering is a Gouraud-shaded solid rendering.  Gouraud shading is a very common way of drawing solid objects that somewhat hides the object's faceted representation (flat triangles).

The rightmost rendering is a textured rendering.  We have effectively glued artist-drawn images onto each of the triangles to give the firebeast more interesting details without introducing more triangles.

Once the firebeast model is fully textured, we load it up into a custom animator program to define various animation poses. 

Firebeast_animate

This picture shows one frame in which the firebeast is taking a hit.  One of its leg components is translucent because we are editing that part in the animation editor.  After all the animation frames and inter-frame timings are set, we save all the data and load it into the game.  The game can then, based on the mood of the firebeast, choose some animation sequence to play and smoothly transition between the animation frames using a process called interpolation.

Stomp

Here is an in-game scene where the firebeast has just finished a stomp; the stomp releases a shock-wave that propagates very quickly outward.  In response, the player has activated the fire-protection spell which can counter any fire-based attack. 

Hope you enjoyed this behind-the-scenes look at the firebeast's design!

Announcement and SmartSplice Tip

Hello!
 
Two thoughts:
 
1. Digital Staircase wants to see your awesome SmartSplice creations!
We've been really impressed with what you've sent us so far. Keep them coming!
Please send your creations to: submit@digitalstaircase.com
(If you give us permission, we may feature it in a future blog post!)
 
2. SmartSplice Tip: Creating figures and diagrams.

With the new features in SmartSplice 2.0, it is now easy to create figures and diagrams using SmartSplice.  In this tip, we'll give a brief overview of some of these new capabilities. 

Step 1: Load an image from file (here, we chose a photo of a Malaysian marketplace). 

Sc1

Step 2: Tap Extract/Insert, Insert object, and then Figure object.  Choosing Arrow will bring up an arrow to be inserted:

Sc2

Step 3: Double-tap the screen to bring out options (e.g., flip, rotate, color,...).  Here we chose rotate.  The green circle with marked angles pops up to aid in precise rotations.  Drag your finger about the circle's center to rotate.

Sc3


Step 4: Double-tap when done rotating; then drag the arrow and resize it as desired.

Sc4

Step 5: Double-tap the screen again, and choose Color & opacity.  Use the sliders to choose the desired color and opacity of the object being inserted (here, an arrow). 

Sc5


Step 6: Press OK when done.  Press the Insert button to insert the arrow into the image.

Sc6

Step 7:  We'll now want to add some text.  Tap Extract/Insert, Insert object, and then Text.  Tap on the text box that appears and fill in the text you wish to insert.  Press Done on the Keyboard, and then OK to proceed.

Sc7


Step 8: Choose the color, size, and position of the text (as you would for the arrow above).  Press Insert to insert the text into the image.

Sc8

Step 9: Try adding other elements to the image, such as a speech bubble.  The bubble starts out opaque, but can be made semi-transparent by playing with the opacity slider. 

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Hello!

Splash

Welcome to the official Digital Staircase blog!

Here at Digital Staircase our mission is to bring the power and enjoyment of visual computing to everyone!  We have some very exciting (and ambitious) projects in the works, and we'd love to share them with you as soon as they are available.  We'll announce them right here (at: blog.digitalstaircase.com), so subscribe to us (or check back here for updates)!

For starters, we'd like to introduce some products that will make your life on the go more enjoyable and convenient.

SmartSplice (version 2.0)

SmartSplice is an image editing app for the iPhone and iPod Touch.  It uses advanced computer algorithms to simplify and speed up many photo editing tasks, opening up possibilities that would be difficult to achieve even with professional programs costing hundreds of dollars.


Buddy Groups (version 2.0)

Buddy Groups is an iPhone and iPod Touch app that allows you to manage contact groups and image galleries.  Create, trade, and email contact groups on the go!  Organize images into galleries on your mobile device instead of sync-ing to computer each time you want to create a new directory.  Buddy Groups also allows you to wirelessly trade information (contacts and images) via WiFi and Bluetooth.

Both SmartSplice and Buddy Groups have free Lite versions that you can download to try out as well!

Thanks for visiting, and be sure to stay tuned for more exciting news in the coming months: blog.digitalstaircase.com

Sincerely,

The Digital Staircase Inc. Team


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