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.
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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.
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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.

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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.)

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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”.
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New 3D model, nearly finalized.

Posted on December 20, 2011 by Steven Halls

I’m pleased to announce that this new 3D model has become cute enough for me to stop fiddling with it. Now we’re going to proceed with giving it skin color, and continue rigging its movements.
February 06 update.
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Ear work, problematic.

Posted on December 11, 2011 by Steven Halls

Feb 15, 2012 update. Here’s a glimpse of one ear, moving upward, in the realtime app.
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Thick upper lip

Posted on December 7, 2011 by Steven Halls

Recently, we’ve been intensively trying some variations of a thicker upper lip, and adding some curves and a little bit of complexity to try for a goofy hillbilly look. Continue reading “Thick upper lip” »

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Eye gaze control

Posted on November 20, 2011 by Steven Halls

Nov 29 update: Eye control got even better, as the math for aiming each eye got figured out and custom-coded, without even needing the Granny function. I’m posting this link too, showing the meaning of eye gaze in various directions, like up-left, up-right, etc. Here’s a link with more wordy explanations, but no pictures.

And here’s an older post discussing Eye Contact Duration.
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Attachments onto Moose

Posted on November 14, 2011 by Steven Halls

I’ve realized that some people are going to enjoy being able to customize their Moose, by attaching new things onto him. At Christmas, decorated antlers and a Santa hat.
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