> -----Original Message-----
> From: Mik Clarke [SMTP:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
>
> Hmmm. Sounds like you need some standardization so that various objects
> can be easily interchanged.
>
[Bullard, Claude L (Len)] Yes. We have had some discussions on the
list about standard controls for motions, and for motions that
indicate
emotions. While the EAI, X3D etc are in flux, the idea should be
the same.
There was some JavaScript work done at NYU(?) on this. H-anim
enables
most of this by making the namespace and the proportions common.
> A few years back I put up some (now lost)
> proposals for standard Avatar skeletons and a 'soul' mechanism to
> provide
> some basic animation (and interaction) for them. Control and placement
> was based on a textual mud, where you would either type actions or soul
> commands - like the script, rather than micro-animating the Avatars
> themselves. The world would be more or less defined at the MUD level,
> with the VRML scenes being controlled from the MUD side. The clients
> need to be smart enough to 'improvise' the details of the settings that
> the central server doesn't provide. Means everyone gets a slightly
> different show, but that's client rendering for you. I'm sort of
> nursing
> CthulhuMud along in the direction of becoming the mud side of the
> server, but my VRML skills are sadly lacking (and there's a lot of work
> to do to
> finish the mud).
>
[Bullard, Claude L (Len)] Happy Birthday, Yogsothoth?? Right idea
for sure.
> You could also check out Duke Nukem 4. That is going to be based upon
> the Unreal game engine, but with the addition of a skeleton system for
> the monsters (to reduce the animation overhead). Should be quite
> impressive when they get it finished (and the engine will probably
> be open enough that it could be borrowed for other things).
>
[Bullard, Claude L (Len)] If we assumed we were going into a
cybertown
stage, we would need some sort of tech that worked there. I agree
we
could get some ideas from the games, and folks like Kahuna have
worked
on developing protos for interactive characters. Different story
approaches
would need different combinations. Real time theatre and improv
need puppetry
(see VRMLDream); cinemaStories need components for actions that
can be tuned; neverEndingStories (evolving) need a persistence
mechanism
for keeping everything from happening at once or not at all. The
best thing
might be the easy thing first: a set of protos for basic emotions
and movements
built to an H-anim frame. Andy has the basics of that if it worked
in a MU and
he seems to be targeting Blaxxun, so maybe something can come of
that.
> Not sure I agree with you on the text side. I used to watch quite a
> few Animee movies with subtitles. Text in muds also allows you to have
> several simultaneous conversations going due to lag. That's a bit
> hard to do visually...
>
[Bullard, Claude L (Len)] Good point.
len
