Sending image data from binary module to LUA

[NisshokuZK]

Hi all,

I have been working on an addon that uses the player's webcam. I have an in-game procedure for testing face detection, that works in the following way:
- The binary module is prompted to grab the current camera frame and estimate the rectangle that contains the player's face
- That rectangle is then used to crop the image
- The cropped image is displayed in-game and the user is asked whether this is correct

Example:
[IMG]http://i62.tinypic.com/2lxa69i.png[/IMG]

Currently I do this by writing the cropped image to a file (stored in garrysmod/data/my_temp/) and passing the newly generated file name to LUA. I generate a new file name because I noticed that the game caches assets, i.e. the same file name is not loaded a second time even if the file has changed. The problem I'm having is that whenever a folder is modified, whether its garrysmod/data or garrysmod/addon/my_addon/, the game freezes for about 10 seconds while reloading the folder, even when the folder only contains one image. I'm looking for a way around this, so I have the following questions:

Does anyone know why the game freezes for so long when modifying a data or addon folder, even when the folder itself only contains one image?
Is there a way to load an image from disk in LUA, that is not in the data or addon folder?
Is there a better way to send image data from binary module to LUA?

I need the image data for a Derma image, by the way. Any help is appreciated!

[MrPlonker]

How do you do this? I've been looking into this but couldn't find an answer...

[G😹nz😻]

have you tried to disable lua autorefresh?

[>>oubliet]

You can load the image in a HTML element using base64 images.

<img src="data:image/png;base64,SOME BASE64 TEXT..." />

Regarding getting webcam data from binary to lua, have you tried .. returning the actual data as a string? (in this case, a base64 string).

[Rubat]

Have you tried creating a texture and returning it as ITexture from your module? Have you tried using rendertargets?

[NisshokuZK]

Thanks all, I'll try all your suggestions out! :) Robotboy, do you have an example of how to create a texture from a module?

MrPlonker, I use OpenCV, an open source library for reading from webcam and writing to a PNG file. So first step would be to learn how to use OpenCV: [url]http://docs.opencv.org/doc/tutorials/tutorials.html[/url]

Then to include OpenCV in your module, make a "makeSnapshot" function in C++ and register it to LUA. Afterwards, load the PNG in LUA. PM me if you need any help with that. :)

[LordOfGears2]

[QUOTE=NisshokuZK;44427150]Thanks all, I'll try all your suggestions out! :) Robotboy, do you have an example of how to create a texture from a module?

MrPlonker, I use OpenCV, an open source library for reading from webcam and writing to a PNG file. So first step would be to learn how to use OpenCV: [url]http://docs.opencv.org/doc/tutorials/tutorials.html[/url]

Then to include OpenCV in your module, make a "makeSnapshot" function in C++ and register it to LUA. Afterwards, load the PNG in LUA. PM me if you need any help with that. :)[/QUOTE]

You could take the PNG it creates and modify it to return a base64 string, and then make that return on client.

[NisshokuZK]

The converting to Base64 string approach works perfectly, thanks guys!

[MeepDarknessM]

this could be abused so much

nonetheless this is really cool