— Justin Blinder + Art | Design | Technology | Random Bits

Recently being faced with the task of making (or buying) a decorative cake, I decided to see if Augmented Reality could come to my rescue. I FAIL horribly at baking, and hoped this time a dash of c++ and a AR marker or two could detract attention from my poor baking/frosting skills. Being quite crunched for time, I opted for a conservative and traditional design, which included a rainbow/dolphin inhabited scene with a unicorn ridden by sad Keanu. After baking the cake, I found a simple BCH marker on the web and iced it onto the top. Any marker that has a basic enough grid structure will seem to work, just as long as there is even spacing between the blocks on the marker.  The coding was fairly basic, and after a little time orienting things in 3d space, the cake was finished.

The main lesson learned is that Augmented Reality will only compensate for poor cake making skills in the right company. This cake was programmed using openFrameworks and ofxARToolkitPlus… and tasted mediocre.