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Hot Tips

- Artwork Tips
- Animation Tips
- Audio Tips
- Sharing your artwork
- Create an AR Mural
- Create an AR tattoo
- FAQs

Printing Tips

Artwork Tips

Augmented Reality can bring static artwork to life with animation and sound design. You can approach this in two ways.

Step / 1
You can animate the existing art.


(Above) *Static Image

(Above) *Existing artwork animates ie the character appears to smoke the cigarette.

OR

Step / 2
You can introduce new art on top of the existing art. From our experience audiences love to use the EyeJack app to discover a new layer of art.

 
 (Above) *Static Image
 


(Above) *New elements animate on top of static artwork ie wrestlers
animate out of eyes and mouth.

Artwork Specifications

EyeJack is available to provide animation services or alternatively you can create your own animation using our EyeJack Creator app. Watch our EyeJack Creator Tutorial here.

  

Best Practices

Augmented Reality works best with artwork that contains the following features:

- good contrast
- rich in detail
- avoid symmetry
- avoid repetitive patterns
* Symmetry and patterns can confuse the image recognition technology.
Below are examples to better demostrate what qualifies as a strong or poor image recognition rating

Example 1


Poor Rating
This image lacks trackable features. It lacks contrast, line definition and has soft edges. It gets a very poor rating.
 

Example 2


Strong Rating
The image has strong contrast and defined edges. It has many trackable features.
 

 

Example 3


Problematic
This image scores well due to the detail and contrast but it is actually too symmetrical and has too many patterns repeating.
It essentially looks like the same image in each quarter which confused our app.
 

Example 4


Strong Rating
The image has some symmetry and repetition but enough detail and contrast to still work fine.

 

Animation Tips

The animations should be uploaded to the EyeJack Creator App as a png sequence or Gif animation  @25 fps. It’s important the animation overlays the artwork perfectly. For example when creating the animation, import the image that you intend to use as the AR trigger in to your animation file to use as a reference layer. Animate directly over the top of that reference layer. Then turn off the reference layer when exporting the animation.

For more animation tips check out our EyeJack Creator Tutorial and here is a quick tutorial to learn how to create a Gif Animation

# Hot Tip - Extending your AR animation beyond the artwork

Put your trigger artwork in the middle of a larger canvas. Make your animation canvas match the new trigger canvas size. Export your animation as a png sequence with a transparent background. The result will make it look like the animation is extending beyond the edges of the artwork!

 

Audio Tips

For best results upload your sound to the EyeJack Creator as uncompressed wav or aif file at the same duration as the animation. The EyeJack Creator app will then automatically transcode the sound with your animation.

 

Printing Tips

- We recommend printing the art on matte paper. Avoid stock that is reflective, as glare can interfere with the image recognition. 

- When printing the AR artwork it is important that the artwork file is not altered in any way i.e. stretched, skewed, cropped or colour adjusted. The artwork file printed for display must be the same artwork which was uploaded via EyeJack Creator.

- Where a large artwork is printed in sections, and requires joins, it is important that the joins are aligned correctly. If you discover the AR is glitching after mounting the artwork, a solution is to photograph the mounted artwork and then upload that photo to EyeJack Creator as the new marker ( trigger image). See ‘Creating an AR mural’ below for more details on how to photograph a large AR artwork.

 

Installation Tips

-  We recommend that artworks are not displayed behind a reflective surface i.e window or perspex, as glare can interfere with the image recognition.

- Ensure your artwork is well lit. The right lighting in the exhibition space is extremely important for the AR image recognition and animation tracking.  We recommend even natural lighting, avoiding spot lights on artwork or mood lighting.

- For AR installations it's recommended to include onsite instructions. To manage the public’s expectations you could install signage or a decal on site to promote the best viewing position.  Ie ‘For best viewing Stand Here'

 

Sharing your Artwork

Once you've put your assets in to the EyeJack Creator app it'll generate a QR code, then go to the mobile app and go to the camera view and scan that code. If you're not signed in it'll ask you to sign in to claim the artwork. Then in camera view tap the thumbnail of your image, make sure it's active, and then tap the share button. See steps in image below.

Click the share button inside the app which will generate a weblink with a QR code on it. If you're planning to exhibit your artwork simply print the QR code and put it next to your artwork.

*Please note, we're currently redesigning this process to make it way simpler!

**If you upload multiple versions of the same artwork, it's a good idea to delete previous versions as that can cause image recognition confusion. 

 

Create an AR mural

We recommend experimenting with a few of your artworks on EyeJack Creator before diving into a mural. Once you are familiar with the EyeJack workflow design your mural. It's good to imagine that people might stand in front of your mural and take AR selfies. The AR design/animation will always appear on top of the people when viewing through your device, so we recommend experimenting with the animation approach to find out what looks best. Size consideration is also important. Trigger images are often scaled down to a certain size when processed through the EyeJack Creator app

Once you have created your mural you will be required to take 2 photos from the same position. One as a perspective reference photo and the other as your main trigger marker photo.

1. Firstly, take your trigger marker photo. This is the photo that you will be adding into the EyeJack Creator as the main mural image that will be recognised and tracked by the EyeJack app. This has to be a front on shot of the mural from a safe viewing distance. We recommend using a hi-resolution camera with a stand to avoid blurry or shaky photos. Also take in consideration lighting conditions that may cast shadows, obstacles such as plants, trees and light posts that may get in the way. All these can create issues with image detection and tracking.

Here are some tips for a perfect trigger marker photo:

  • Taking your photo during overcast conditions.
  • Removing obstacles in photo editing software such as photoshop.
  • We recommend a viewing distance ratio of 1:1 metres. If your mural is 2x2 metres, you would view it from a distance of 2 metres. A Safe viewing distance refers to avoiding potential environmental hazards that may put viewers in harm's way such as roads, cliffs, restricted areas etc.

2. Secondly, prepare to take your perspective reference photo. This is the photo that acts as a guide to help you realign your first trigger marker photo so that it is perfectly flat and positioned correctly. Because murals can vary in shape and size, photos lenses often curve and distort the mural’s perspective. To get a perfectly flat angle use marking tape visually create a right angle (90 degree corner) frame around or inside the mural with all sides matching in height and length eg. 4x4x2x2 or 5x5x3x3. Once you have visually marked out the outline of your frame with tape take the photo from the same position as trigger marker photo.

Here are some tips for a perfect perspective reference photo:

  • Create a perfect right angle frame around or inside your mural. Use your surrounding environment to accurately measure out and place your frame eg, floor, side walls.
  • Write down your outlined frame measurements.
  • If your Mural is too large, you may need to break it up into sections and take multiple photos with multiple outlines.

3. Once you have your 2 photos you are ready to realign them to the correct angle using any photo editing software such as photoshop.

  • Create a new canvas and import the 2 photos you have taken from the same position with the perspective reference photo as the top visible layer.
  • Add a semi transparent box matching the same aspect ratio as your recorded taped outline in your perspective reference photo and scale to size.
  • Selected both photos and adjust the corners so that the outline you have marked out with tape on the perspective reference photo matches the corner of your semi transparent box. You may have to shift this a few times until the image is perfectly aligned.
  • Once you have aligned both images simply deleted the perspective reference image and there you have it! Your trigger marker photo is aligned to the correct angle.

4. Crop and save your photo. Now you can  import it into your animation program and then do the animation on a layer over the top of the photo and then export the animation as a png sequence to the same dimensions as the photo (without the photo layer).  Upload the photo and the animation to the EyeJack Creator tool and then test out the AR animation on the mural. *We usually do a quick test where I slap an existing animation on top of the marker and go out to the site to check that it’s working ok.  When that all works nicely you can share your AR creations with the EyeJack team and we port them all to the EyeJack app as an event.

  

Create an AR tattoo

Smaller tattoos work best. Avoid tattoos that wrap around the body. It’s too hard for the camera to track what it can’t see.

Once you have a nice clean photo, import the photo into your animation program. Put the photo as the bottom layer and create your animation on layers above. Export your animation as a png sequence (without the photo).

Download the EyeJack Creator app… http://creator.eyejackapp.com/

Upload your photo

Upload your animation

Upload sound (if you have sound design)

EyeJack Creator will generate a QR code

Scan the code using EyeJack and then point your phone at the tattoo. Voilla! **it should work!

 

FAQs

How does EyeJack Creator Work?

EyeJack Creator is a simple desktop app that lets artists bring their art to life with animations and sound with three simple steps... 1) Upload your art   2) Upload your animation 3) Test your new AR art with the EyeJack mobile app and watch our EyeJack Creator tutorial here

How can I create an animation?

EyeJack Creator supports videos, animated gifs or png sequences. You could create a video using your smartphone OR if you want to try something more advanced, we recommend using programs like Adobe Photoshop, Animate or After Effects to create animations. Here is a 1 minute Photoshop animation tutorial to teach you how to create a simple gif animation

*The advantage of a gif animation or a png sequence is it lets you export your animation with a transparent background. Show sample of animation with transparent background.

 

My AR animation is glitchy, any tips?

Augmented Reality works best with artwork that contains the following features:

- good contrast

- rich in detail

- avoid symmetry

- avoid repetitive patterns

- Symmetry and patterns can also confuse the AR image recognition technology.