| Check out the article about Peter Plantec and Virtual Humans in Space at MSNBC. It's pretty interesting stuff. The same article is available at space.com. |
Yapanda News The nice folks at Yapanda had intended to have a site where you could use the 3dMeNow interface to create your own real-time 3D talking head and script it using the approach in my book. Unfortunately they' will not be offering that service for a while. In the meantime try Pandora. Yapanda has uploaded a revised script editor Generator that you can download here. It works in Windows 2000. |
| What's on the Horizon - KurzweilAI If you want to keep up with the latest in all sorts of cutting edge technologies including virtual humans, nanotechnology, quantum dots, quantum computing, bioengineering and much more. I suggest you sign up for Ray Kurzweil's daily or weekly news letter from KurzweilAI. It's the best way I know of to stay on top of the very latest developments in AI related science. |
Ed Hooks Newsletter As you know Ed helped me write the chapter on virtual acting and how to make it work for you. Ed runs seminars and also has a weekly newsletter that you can subscribe to. It covers regular acting as well as acting for animators. His site also has other resources you might find of interest. Here's the link: Ed Hooks Site |
| Windows 2000 Issue solved for most people...read on There is an issue in installing the Yapanda software on Windows 2000 that I was unaware of. I tested it on win-97 and Windows XP believing that since XP was based on NT2000. Yapanda discovered that it was my install program that was the problem. The solution is to download the entire Yapanda folder and unzip it to the following location: C:/Program Files/yapanda. Then read the w2000fix.txt file for more instructions. File also in DOWNLOADS section. |
Excellent Source Link for lipsynch For facial animation and Lipsynch check out : |
Building Virtual Humans
My book Virtual Humans is intended to introduce you to the possibilities inherent in virtual human design. At first they seem like trivial little animated characters. But as you read, you'll discover that they are a huge part of our future. They can already be made exceptionally intelligent and aware. With available software they can be set up to recognize you on sight, carry out your spoken wishes, hold intelligent conversations, have a sense of humor and much, much more.
The CD associated with the book contains software to help you experiment with virtual human design. It's very simple to setup, script and use. It is meant to illustrate how amazingly realistic you can make your virtual human using relatively unsophisticated software. My fondest hope is that some of you are smart enough to create a virtual human core engine with a plug-in architecture. That means we'll be able to plug in face recognition, Robotics controls, X-10 control modules, environment sensors and anything else we can think of that will provide awareness and control to our characters.
This is a place to share Ideas and our v-humans group at Yahoo (on the left) is a great place to get started
By freely sharing our ideas and even our code, we can jumpstart the development of sophisticated virtual humans. The whole world needs them if we intend to keep up with our ever more complex technology. In fact, virtual humans will facilitate that advancement because, without virtual human help, we'll soon be faced with technology that is too complicated to use. Cell phones are a good example. Without reading the manual, you can only use about 10% or less of the features you're paying for...and who reads the damn manual? If you do ...bravo, most people don't get beyond the quick start page.
The v-humans group in now over 150 people! We exchange ideas, philosophy and software etc. This is where the Yapanda guru Anthony Carson can be reached. You need to be approved. So when you apply to the group, please mention virtual humans and your interest so we know your not a porn spammer.
For rants and raves and musings on this subject you ca tune in to my BLOG from this page. The link is on the upper left menu, V-humans Blog.
As for these web pages...I maintain them myself and I am not brilliant at it. I think I've managed to eliminate all the errors, but there appear to be some small incompatabilities with early browsers. I have no idea how to fix that. Apparently this site is working for you....or you wouldn't be reading this I guess. Carry on.
Virtual Humans maintains Five Stars at Amazon after 18 reviews! If you haven't baught it...please consider doing so. If you've read it and honestly love the book, and haven't reviewed it...please continue the trend. If you hate the book, please send me some email with your suggestions. -P-