Hi guys, Thanks for all the answers. This is very interesting. There are actually 2 dimensions in that discussion:
1- mocap (motion capture) or emotion capture: It's interesting to see that you thought about mocap from the get go. As you know (at least the guys I met in LA at VWExpo :) ), I've a vested interest to make something like that working (see my work at http:// www.handsfree3d.com/) and it's just fitting that Jani challenges me to "just do it" :) We're trying to bring a much livelier experience to VW and are considering moving our work to rex because of its superior avatar model compared to SL. Porting the puppeteering is one thing but the face animation quite another. One idea I had was to "recognize and trigger" emotions rather than do pure mocap (for the face that is, the body is another problem). The reason behind this is that precise tracking of all elements in a face is rather difficult and that bad tracking of just a couple of points could result in very unpleasing and incomprehensible poses. It's okay when animating a robot or a snowman but, if you use your own FaceGen mesh with your own face, that could be very unpleasing (you don't want your avatar's face look contorted...). On the other hand, existing emotion anims (like the ones existing in SL) are perfectly understandable by others seeing them. Since the goal is to communicate emotion in a meaningful and pleasing way, it seems that "recognition+trigger" rather than "tracking" would be more efficient in that case. There are techniques developed to do just that (recognition I mean) which seem to work well under a wide range of capture conditions (see the talk "The Human Face" in http://www.photomarketing.com/6sightliveUpload/Default/ day1/day1_video_11.html). Also, thanks to Carl for suggesting some other pointers. 2- default motion: even if we're successful in implementing webcam emotion capture, we (as a group) need to recognize that not everybody will have such a camera and, even though, not everybody will *want* to have it plugged in while in VW (sometimes it's appropriate, sometimes it's not). This is when a good "default motion" is important as it improves the copresence feel a great deal. The anims currently available in SL are rather pleasing and I'd encourage the rex community to implement something similar. The eyes in particular are very important for this feeling of copresence to set in. For more on "copresence", check out the work of Jeremy Bailenson at : http:// vhil.stanford.edu/. Read in particular "The Independent and Interactive Effects of Embodied-Agent Appearance and Behavior on Self- Report, Cognitive, and Behavioral Markers of Copresence in Immersive Virtual Environments". Cheers, - Philippe On Sep 24, 2008, at 9:26 AM, Antti Ilomäki wrote: > > Having your actual facial expressions modeled in the virtual reality > would be great, but in the meantime simply having the avatar do some > simple stuff by itself would probably be a cost-effective immersion > booster. > > 2008/9/24 Carl Kenner <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>: >> >> The Emotiv Epoc can record the user's face movements. It can record >> eyebrow position, eyelid position, horizontal eye position, how much >> they are smiling, clenching their teeth, and how much they are >> smirking to the left or right side, and whether they are laughing. On >> the other hand, the Neural Impulse Actuator can only record >> horizontal >> eye position, and it records that badly. >> So if you can make sure those control points are implemented, people >> with an Emotiv Epoc will be able to use it. >> >> I'm not sure how best to do it with a webcam though. >> >> 2008/9/24 Jani Pirkola <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>: >>> Hi Philippe, >>> >>> we are exploring possibilities to animate faces. Currently the >>> basic woman >>> has bones inside face, so she could be animated - then man does >>> not because >>> we want first to figure out what the bone structure should be to >>> make it >>> work well. Our original plan was to make that working during the >>> spring, but >>> we needed to postpone that work. The idea at that time was to >>> integrate web >>> camera and record user's face movements and overlay them using >>> control >>> points to the avatar. There seems to be only proprietary >>> solutions to that >>> so our GPL license for the viewer does not help either. >>> >>> Now we do not have exact plans when and who does that work, but >>> it is like >>> you said; it enhances greatly the feeling of presence and needs >>> to be done >>> at some point. Help would be appreciated! >>> >>> Best regards, >>> Jani >>> >>> 2008/9/24 Philippe Bossut <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> >>>> >>>> Hi, >>>> I've a generic question to ask about rex avatars (tried the same >>>> one on >>>> IRC but no one answered so, trying here). I notice that, >>>> contrarily to SL's >>>> avatars, rex's avatars do not "blink". Actually, they do not >>>> blink nor they >>>> move their eyeballs or move their heads about. This gives very >>>> little >>>> "copresence" to the avatar (no feeling of "being there with >>>> someone else"). >>>> Any idea why this is that way? Was there a conscious decision to >>>> take that >>>> out of the rexviewer? >>>> Alternatively, I noticed that anims like "breathing" are on... >>>> Cheers, >>>> - Philippe >>>> >>> >>> >>>> >>> >> >>> >> > > > --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ http://groups.google.com/group/realxtend -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
