Mary Harrsch (mharrsch@OREGON.UOREGON.EDU)
Wed, 06 Oct 1999 16:51:46 -0700
Date: Wed, 06 Oct 1999 16:51:46 -0700 From: Mary Harrsch <mharrsch@OREGON.UOREGON.EDU> Subject: Re: Alife, Inc.'s Web Guide and educational pricing program
List address to send message to everyone: ifets-discuss@LISTSERV.READADP.COM
Details of current discussion: http://ifets.ieee.org/discussions/discuss.html
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Recently, I ordered ALife, Inc.'s Webguide 1.0 product
(http://www.artificial-life.com/main.asp ) to create a virtual help desk for
my network users. In my spare time I'm also working on a virtual Julius
Caesar that I can upload to Ancient Sites (http://www.ancientsites.com) so
history buffs and students there can engage in a conversation with him. The
product has excellent documentation and clearly explains the steps to build
a Natural Language Knowledgebase. Like the Sylvie product from Virtual
Personalities, Inc., (http://www.vperson.com )Web Guide is based on the
Eliza model developed by Fuzzy Maudlin back in the sixties but Web Guide
incorporates the concepts of context, filters and synonyms which really
helps when it comes to specifying and ranking subjects and anticipating
potential user queries. It is also extremely customizable. You can create
and incorporate your own character graphics and imbed the Web Guide in a
frame page so the guide can pull up related web sites in an adjoining frame
while answering user queries.
Although I was unable to qualify for a free copy of their professional
development product because I am a faculty member of an institution of
higher education, they are offering their full professional development
product (which normally retails for $199) to any high school faculty member
interested in integrating the artificial intelligence product into web pages
as part of a classroom activity.
Recently, the IFETS discussion group tackled the topic of using computer
programming to teach important thought processes to students. I think the
tasks involved in creating a virtual personality really provide an excellent
opportunity to not only incorporate subject content, but teach students how
to identify communication components, categorize subject matter, and explore
different ways information is communicated. In the Web Guide product the
knowledgbase is developed by identifying classes of information (Caesar,
Rome, the Ancient World), then subtopics (people, politics, geography), then
individual subjects (Aurelia, consul, Transalpine Gaul) which are ranked by
priority, and finally specifying key word patterns to categorize user
queries (*who* mother*) so the guide will respond with appropriate
information. The information is entered into a Microsoft database tool
which generates the script for the artificial personality.
Since Web Guide came with only one face character and one full body
character, I am using Poser 4
(http://www.metacreations.com/products/poser4/ ), a character animation
product developed by Metacreations (http://www.metacreations.com/ ) to
create my own character graphics. I think students would find this aspect of
the project interesting as well.
This is my first experience with Poser and although I'm still a little
clumsy with it I was able to produce a character resembling Caesar (except
with quite a bit more hair than Caesar had - they didn't have a "male curly
receding hair " feature). Poser's character palette includes a variety of
different ethnic combinations and the ability to change facial shape. (I
slightly elongated Caesar's face, narrowed his cheekbones and gave him a
hint of a Roman nose - I tried to base it on a picture of the bust of him I
have seen). Using the face camera, I was able to manipulate every aspect of
his countenance - from a slightly raised eyebrow to a flared nostril - to
create a range of facial expressions. I could also export the face as a jpeg
which I needed to do because I am going to use the face-only template in Web
Guide for my Caesar character (there is also a full body template). The
exported jpeg quality of the 300 pixel by 300 pixel face was not real crisp
but by the time I reduced the image size with Photoshop to only 100 pixels
by 100 pixels, a recommended size in Web Guide because of web bandwidth
limitations, the compression artifacts were not noticeable.
Web Guide is based on a java applet that lets you specify any number of
animation parameters. You only need to produce a vertical strip of images of
equal frames, give it a name, tell the applet how many frames are in the
animation and at what speed in miliseconds you wish to play the animation
and voila, your artificial character can express emotion. To help me with
this process, I opened each of the facial character animations that come
with Web Guide then attempted to create the same range of expressions in my
Poser figure. Then I simply exported each facial expression as jpeg, loaded
the jpeg in Photoshop, reduced the image to 100x100 pixels, created a new
image with the correct height for the number of frames in the animation (a
five frame animation would be 100 pixels wide by 500 pixels high) and pasted
the images in the proper sequence. I also added a feature that I learned by
experimenting earlier with the Virtual Personalities software "Sylvie". It
makes the character seem more alive if it blinks so for each facial
expression, I designed one with eyes open and one with eyes closed so I
could create the illusion of blinking.
One problem I encountered was the absence of historical costume props in
Poser. There were none included with Poser and Zygote
(http://www.zygote.com ), a company that makes props for Poser, didn't seem
to have any on their web site, either (although I sent them an email and
they liked the idea and said they would look into it). So, since I'm using
only a head shot which includes only part of the shoulders, I dressed Caesar
in a T-shirt which I colored vermillion and a vest which I colored a
burnished bronze color. It was about the closest thing I could create that
would somewhat resemble a Roman uniform.
Poser is a very powerful product but I wish Metacreations would provide a
Quickstart tutorial that is designed for a novice. The manual that comes
with Poser includes a tutorial but it spends most of the lesson on animation
concepts such as keyframes, lighting, etc. I think a tutorial should begin
with inserting a nude figure, then step the user through choosing hair,
ethnicity characteristics, and clothing. Then demonstrate the use of the
paint tool to adjust colors and the use of the face camera and facial
manipulation tools to display emotions, especially how to save facial
expressions to the face palette so you can easily reuse expressions with new
characters. Then move on to animating and manipulating the limbs, creating
various poses, motion path, keyframes, and lighting. Working with hair and
clothing is not described in detail until page 163 in the user manual while
complex topics like inverse kinematics precede descriptions of basic
fundamentals. I have always been more of a linear thinker rather than a
spatial thinker and perhaps that is why I find Metacreations approach
awkward. I had a similar feeling when I was trying to use another of their
products, Bryce 4. The tutorial did not seem to progress from easy to
difficult. Also, like many other software companies, Metacreations spends an
inordinate amount of time describing ways to customize your work
environment. Trust me, after over a decade in tech support I can say with
relative confidence that customizing the workspace is about the last thing
new users are thinking about when they are exploring a new software product.
In fact, most users do little to customize their workspace even after
spending many hours with a product. I went to a Microsoft seminar once and
was extremely frustrated by this penchant. The seminar was limited to only a
couple of hours and I wanted to talk about advanced network functionality
and instead, over half an hour was wasted talking about customizing the
workspace!
Mary Harrsch
Network and Information Systems Manager
College of Education
102-K Education
University of Oregon
Eugene, OR 97403
(541) 346-3554
http://darkwing.uoregon.edu/~mharrsch/index.htm
---------------------------------------------------------
Forum website: http://ifets.gmd.de/
Forum's contact person: kinshuk@ieee.org
Info on Join/Leave List: http://ifets.gmd.de/maillist.html
---------------------------------------------------------
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.0b3 on Thu 07 Oct 1999 - 02:18:56 MEST