A new Talking Moose is under development.

Posted on September 7, 2010 by Steven Halls

Welcome!  The talking moose was famous 25 years ago.

A lot has changed since then, with computing power and the internet.  I think the time has finally come, to use advances in 3D graphics and speech synthesis, to make a fantastic new Talking Moose.

I’ve been slowly developing this new Moose over the past few years, aided by modern programmers, and now I’ve decided to share with you, the story of developing the new Moose.  The development process, along with my mistakes and setbacks, you may find interesting.

I think the new Moose will be incredible.  Not as revolutionary as the original moose was in 1986, but I truly believe that this new 3D character, with his new focus on humor, usefulness and  internet content,  will show the world a successful formula for a tolerable talking character/agent.

On the right-hand sidebar, are links to blogging topics. Click those topics to start reading about this new Moose.

Below, are some of the latest posts, but kindof random. A better way to learn more, is clicking on the Blogging Topics to the right.

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The Moose as WebSocket server.

Posted on January 25, 2012 by Steven Halls

Gamasutra had a short but useful article about implementing a WebSocket server. It’s apparently kindof like making the moose be a Web server for HTTP, except it ends up being faster and for custom messages. Continue reading “The Moose as WebSocket server.” »

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Camera perspective, What to choose?

Posted on January 24, 2012 by Steven Halls

I made this graphic showing the effect of different camera field-of-view settings, on how the Moose looks.
At some point, I’m going to have to choose a setting that makes the Moose look cutest. Trouble is, at the moment, I’m not sure which I like best. Maybe #3 in the middle, but it also has to look “correct” when it’s hovering in front of a real desktop.

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Jokes not suitable 1

Posted on January 23, 2012 by Steven Halls

- My grandfather died while having sex. I cry every time I watch the video.

- It’s so awkward when you accidentally see your parents having sex. I’m never visiting that website again.

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Blinking

Posted on January 19, 2012 by Steven Halls

Some progress was evident today, with the new 3D model showing improvements in its eyelashes, and blinking. I realize that the eyes are still a big issue, and I won’t be fully able to adjust the color and shading around the eyelids, until I see this new model moving in real time. That time should be soon.
Continue reading “Blinking” »

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Give the gift of Talking Moose – flirting – a monitization idea.

Posted on January 18, 2012 by Steven Halls

From this article on gamasutra about techniques to monitize free-to-play games, I read that people are willing to pay, to give a “gift” of a free-to-play game to someone else, that someone being the target of their affections, who they are flirting with.

Continue reading “Give the gift of Talking Moose – flirting – a monitization idea.” »

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Face tracking with Kinect

Posted on January 14, 2012 by Steven Halls

As a pleasant side effect of some work we just completed on eye-gaze, we’ve succeeded in coding the ability to correctly adjust the viewing angle of the Moose, as if he truly were a 3-dimension object in front of the computer monitors.
Continue reading “Face tracking with Kinect” »

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Procedural Animation

Posted on January 14, 2012 by Steven Halls

A big difference and big advantage that this Moose has over most computer graphic animated characters, is that all the Moose’s motions will be randomized.
Continue reading “Procedural Animation” »

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Polygon mesh of new 3D model

Posted on January 11, 2012 by Steven Halls

The polygon count of the new 3D model recently underwent a significant reduction, (which is desirable). I took this opportunity to capture pictures of the 3D mesh, which I hope you’ll find interesting.

Continue reading “Polygon mesh of new 3D model” »

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More talking characters

Posted on January 8, 2012 by Steven Halls

Today I found another website that lists some other talking characters. Here are some of the interesting ones.

- Charamel.com (used 3D rendering to make 2D characters.)
- MediaSemantics.com (3D look, but 2D tech, does at least use Text-to-Speech, with crude lip flapping. Head motion is stiff. But I was pleased to see they have distribution deals with Loquendo, Ivona, NeoSpeech and Cepstral, which means, I should be able to do similar deals with Voice companies, too.)

Continue reading “More talking characters” »

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ChatScript

Posted on January 6, 2012 by Steven Halls

Here are some links to articles on ChatScript, by Bruce Wilcox. It’s got some things that will be useful to the Talking Moose, and better suited than AIML. However, I’m not planning to have the Moose be, a Chatbot.

- a Jan 2012 article, “A google talk on Natural Language Processing”.
Continue reading “ChatScript” »

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