Unity, Kinect and Zigfu

In one lessons of Interactive Systems we learned that we could connect the Microsoft Kinect to Unity 3D. Therefore we needed a plugin that hels us connect both systems and work with them. The plugin ist called Zigfu. It is an easy way to make and play Kinect apps. You just have to download the plugin, hook up your sensor, and try it out.

We tried some standard things that were already within the plugin. Our body was captured and we could move some game characters with our own body movement.

We then created an interaction: With hand movements we could move objects to the background or to the foreground. We could let the objects transform into particles or let them shine, disappear or something like that. It made a lot of fun to change the effects, objects and so on just by replacing it. The main core stayed the same but the possibilities of changing were almost endless.

We had some difficulties by connecting the Kinect to a Mac (it works better with Windows) and sometimes the Kinect could not catch our movements exactly. But generally speaking it worked quite well and inspired us a lot.