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Kinect hack: Minecraft statues (now with animation!)

by David Hinkle on Jan 21st 2011 6:00PM

Building upon the previous Kinect hack that allows you to scanify yourself into MineCraft, this latest update allows you to scale said model and, even better, now supports animations for up to three seconds. Imagine it: your faithful recreation of BioShock can now have an actual moving, talking head of Andrew Ryan greeting you upon entry into Rapture. Who wouldn't want that?

Or you could just tease your cat with a laser pointer like in the video demonstration past the break, we guess.

Via: Reddit
Source: Order of Events

Tags: cats, kinect-hacks, microsoft, Minecraft, pc, xbox

Reader Comments (39)

Imagine what kinds of things we will see once the SDK comes out. Amazing !

@JimmyBoy

minecraft porn

I'm callin it

@JimmyBoy

Don't worry, Microsoft will release that in about a year or so... once the mod community has come up with a better one of their own.

Missed the boat on this they did. Many clones they shall see! hmmmmm

I'm seeing two people with Kinects fighting each other in Minecraft via giant statues in the near future.

@YimYimYimi

YYEEEESSSS

@YimYimYimi
And I repeat my statement in the previous news about this hack:

This is the ultimate Kinect Hack.

Kinect has seen some of the smartest people out there.

Now they just need to make a shadow of colossus where you're the colossus.

@SaltCube64
*spoiler alert*
That pretty much happens at the end of the game.

@DreadArrow
Not the same thing, also why hasn't Joystiq removed this comment yet?

Imagine what kinds of things we will see once the SDK comes out. Amazing!

@JimmyBoy

OH HO, is funny because SDK never coming out!

Although I lament the launch lineup's mediocrity, it's clear enough by this point that Kinect is a very powerful piece of hardware, MUCH more sophisticated than the PS Eye, in spite of the fanboy wishes to the contrary. We never saw hacks like these for Eye; not even close.

@JasonGW

The eye never had the fanfare or advertising behind it either.

The majority of these Kinect 'hacks, can, and have already been done with basic webcams.

There are a few that are impressive. The 3d room, the music video, and this.

@Credge

You can do some basic sort of motion tracking with a web cam, head or hand tracking, but its a lot more painful to implement. With the depth information it becomes really easy, you could have some really naive approach and have it work really well. And of course the web cam needs good lighting and contrasting colors.

@Credge I'd say the surgical assistance mod is pretty cool, as are the quadrocopters.

As someone else points out, the hardware of Kinect makes doing these kinds of hacks much more simple and effective than a webcam can, much less PS Eye (which is really no more than a webcam with a decent mic). I'm not saying the Eye is useless, but the marketing is irrelevant to whether it was hacked to do cool shit or not :). Hackers don't go "ZOMG, check out teh commercial, I gotsta MOD that shiz!" :p

@JasonGW
Playstation Eye came out over 3 years ago, so I doubt anyone ever claimed it was better than Kinect, especially considering the price difference.
Playstation Move (which requires Playstation Eye) on the other hand had more in common with Kinect, however most of the argument regarding it revolved around the fact that move had buttons while kinect was purely a motion controller. The complaint wasn't that Kinect was less advanced than Move, it was that Kinect wasn't suited for games that needed fast response times.

wow. This is impressive, I wonder if you can do this on a PC with a webcam.

@gbpackers994

While I can't say for certain, I'm pretty sure that this uses the Kinect's depth-of-field sensor to make the model 3d. A webcam would only produce a colored cardboard cutout.

@antaydos

keyword was webcams, plural.

can be done but harder to do.

This is the first Kinect hack that's impressed me.

inb4 meatspin

so kinect actually made these hacks seen really cool.

i would make me out of TNT, then proceed to blow myself up

@PR0F3TA

-up

Win.

@PR0F3TA

You would be Minecraft's largest creeper.

I wonder what happens when you walk over to where the statue is moving.

Probably death.

these are starting to prove to me that Kinect's greatest potential has completely nothing to do with xbox or hardcore games. the tech behind it seems to be pretty amazing