One thing I find Ironic is how great technology is developed and either never sees the light of day or fades before its prime. Technology I worked on with a Company called Katrix is a case in point. Directable characters in a toolkit that allowed you to set up “scenarios” like a theater production with props and sets. The characters came with a whole host of intelligent behaviors and used IK and advanced biomechanical simulation (that I also used on a project to train Special Forces soldiers and was used in the Disney Quest game “Ride the Comix” and a Dance Game for Meta Creations). Unfortunately the company went under and the toolkit never reached the wider world, it was years ahead of its time. » Read more: Where are they now?
Archive for April, 2005
Where are they now?
April 30th, 2005Web characters
April 29th, 2005
I have worked a good deal with web characters and have seen a few nice technologies in the area of character display. I came across a new one recently by a Company called Inovani . Their primary focus is on very detailed and realistic lip syncing but they also have a nice simple and effective facial gesture system that can take as its input “emoticons” from text. Try it out here . Currently only high level and simple gestures are drivable although lower level (i.e. muscle) gestures could be built if a project needed it. It is also a Java system which is nice so it runs as an applet and could potentially run well on mobile devices.
FaceFX animation system
April 27th, 2005
A new product released by OC3 Entertainment called FaceFX offers a toolkit to help automate and speed the processing of lip syncing and facial animation for game characters. Interestingly for me it also includes an SDK that may be driven in real time to help with more dynamic behaviors. I also see that they seem to be using the FAC (Facial Action coding) Units schema for labeling facial movements. » Read more: FaceFX animation system
Market shifts
April 26th, 2005There is an article with Nintendo President Iwata San at Game Industry Biz where they talk about Nintendos market focus for the DS console. As we have pointed out it is not for “hard core gamers”. The article makes a few points I would have a different opinion on, game biz writer Rob Fahey states “he wants to show the rest of the world how much fun our medium can be as well”, well no he does not, this is not your medium, it will not be a game medium, Nintendogs is not a game. He is showing a new medium that will be inhabited by new players unless the game business matures. » Read more: Market shifts
Drama in context
April 24th, 2005A couple of very interesting articles here by writer and interactive designer Randy Littlejohn on Interactive drama “Adapting the Tools of Drama to Interactive Storytelling” and “Agitating for Dramatic Change”. I have covered some of the same topics but from a different angle (i.e. from the perspective of the characters rather than drama). If you have read his articles and mine you will see that we arrive at many of the same conclusions but from our different perspectives. Thats pretty cool, i wish I had read those articles when they came out in 2001 and 2003!
New Emotional Robot
April 23rd, 2005
Some of you may have seen this storyon BoingBoing today, sounds interesting. The Harbin Institute of Technology in China has developed a small cute robot called “Baizhixing” (phonetic pronunciation anyone?) that can produce facial gestures and has lip syncing. Without a video its difficult to say the extent of the gestures and science reporting is typically very poor so facial gestures could mean anything from “it can smile” to “it has a full range of interactive continuous gestures with 50 degrees of freedom”. From the image I would guess it has control of its lips and mouth, move its eyes, eye lids and perhaps eyebrows.
More Nintendo Promos
April 22nd, 2005
I caught some more interesting promotional images for the Nintendo DS at Shibuya train station in Tokyo. Again, see where they are focusing and tell me this is not a good sign for the future of emotional interactive entertainment. I will try and talk to the Nintendo people and get a more in depth feel for where they are headed.
Avatars and simulation
April 20th, 2005
I have not written very much about avatar applications, briefly mentioning one my friends at Mobile Mascots produced a few years back in the form of an IM client, but there exists space within these applications to enhance there abilities with simulation. Essentially filling in gaps in behavioral capability rather than being completely autonomous.
I just came across a very interesting looking new IM client called IMVU (IM view or is it I envy you?) that uses 3D avatars. It is built by a company founded by the original creator of There which is a 3D avatar world that I have used and is pretty impressive itself. » Read more: Avatars and simulation
Stream programming
April 17th, 2005I have talked about how the design of the new version of my software has been evolving, particularly with regard to making it more emergent and less rigid by removing branching conditionals. Here I want to introduce the latest feature to emerge, what I am calling “stream programming” as a technique new to me, possibly new to you but probably not new to the world. This has grown out of the effort to decouple the systems within my engine and to treat data temporally with some permanence. » Read more: Stream programming
Motivation as Economy
April 15th, 2005Central to any system to drive autonomous behavior, including emotional behavior, is motivation. Variously termed drives and goals it is, as is usually the case with brain systems, a multidimensional system comprising of various conceptual and temporal dimensions.
Motivation is also very much a pyramid or tree structure having a small number, perhaps just one, central motivations being supported by further sub motivations. As an example you want money but as a sub motivation / requirement you have to work, you also have to eat. Creating this structure goes a long way to defining behavior. » Read more: Motivation as Economy
