INTERNET

New 3D talking heads build virtual communities in cyberspace

INTERNET The Web Doctor

When Steve DiPaolo speaks, he's hard to ignore, especially when he appears as an olive-green giraffe's head with purple horns.

No, I am not just another drug casualty. What I saw was not a hallucination but the magic made possible by the developers who are building new and fantastical 3D worlds in cyberspace. DiPaola, a visiting professor at Stanford University's Center for the Study of Language and Information, appeared during the Experiential E-Commerce conference last Friday at Kellogg Center as an "avatar," a graphic that people use to represent themselves in online chat communities.

In the Traveler communities, avatars (graphic representations of real people) allow members to talk to each other using their own voices.

Major breakthroughs

"We've come a long way since the early days," said DiPaola, as his giraffe lips moved in synch to his words. Not only was his giraffe's head a sophisticated piece of 3D art, but he could change its expressions from anger to sadness to joy with a few keystrokes. Even more impressive was that he spoke to us in his normal voice, using a microphone hooked to his computer thousands of miles away.

"Adding speech makes a huge difference," said Web visionary Bruce Damer, president and CEO of Digital Space who acted as the MSU audience's guide to the Traveler communities that allow avatars to talk. "We know that the people who enjoy using avatars with text-based communication are not at all like the people who enjoy getting together to talk using real speech."

I will admit that I personally never saw much purpose in 3D, VRML (virtual-reality markup language) and avatars before. Lots of work to achieve very little, it seemed. But by adding real speech, the possibilities explode.

"One thing we have already done is host a total immersian French course," said DiPaolo. "You walk around the 3D room and interact with others using the language. Even the books and candelabras would talk to you."

Within a few weeks, Traveler will offer an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting. "People can get together to help each other and remain truly anonymous," DiPaolo says. It is the opportunity to build therapeutic communities online that holds enormous promise for bringing help to people who are isolated, either by geography, disability or other barriers.

In the OzGate world at the Traveler community website, DiPaola's giraffe was joined by Brian Tomlinson and his wife "Lady J," whose avatars portray them as a pharoah and his queen.

Admittedly, it was peculiar at first to hear an ancient Egyptian talking with a strong hill-country West Virginia accent, but apparently our brains are wired to accept this as sensible quite quickly. Almost immediately, the audience was posing questions to this fantastical crew, as if chatting with a room of colorful disembodied heads was a normal, everyday experience.

Building new worlds

Michigan State University's M.I.N.D. Lab hosted this cutting-edge conference, which allowed researchers, online business specialists and assorted fellow Webgeeks a peek into what may well be a major part of the future of the Web. It was indeed dazzling to see presenters from all over the world show off their innovations. I especially liked the German virtual furniture site where you can arrange your prospective purchases in a space that mirrors your own living room (and you can change colors and fabrics with a mouseclick).

Damer and Adobe guru Mike Kaplan treated Saturday morning's workshop audience to a glimpse of their work with the Haughton-Mars Project, a private group attempting to persuade NASA to send real astronauts to the red planet. The real-world project is located on harsh Devon Island in the polar regions of the North Sea. A small band of dedicated researchers is trying to simulate what astronauts could do on Mars. Damer and Kaplan are building the 3D virtual community that will allow group members to work out problems in advance without putting actual people at risk.

Freebie tools and books available

If you have a computer with a sound card, speakers and a microphone, you can download the free software you need to join the talking worlds at Traveler.

Adobe's Atmosphere allows you to build 3D worlds. The free beta version appears stable and fun to play with especially if you know Adobe's flagship product Photoshop.

You can also tour (and then download) the beta (draft) version of Adobe Corporation's Atmosphere (sorry, only text chat only so far - no voices). Atmosphere's "Browser" allows you to visit rooms built by others, all of which currently reside on a server in the basement of Adobe's California corporate offices.

The free Atmosphere "Builder" allows you to design 3D spaces by placing wireframe objects on a stage and then adding your own textures. After a couple hours' instruction, I was able to create a room where the walls and floor appeared to be constructed out of pictures taken months ago with my digital camera. If you take the tour, you will see others have built amazing new worlds using these tools. Adobe's Kaplan assured everyone who took the tutorial that a new and more robust version of the software will be available in a few weeks.

Both Traveler and Adobe allow you to choose an avatar for yourself from pre-made selections as you visit their worlds. However, if you want to try your hand at building your own, you can download trial versions of Poser and its Pro Pack from Curious Labs. Remember to think polygons and not pixels -- this is 3D.

Books that can help you create Avatars include Damer's 1998 Peachpit Press publication Avatars and Sue Ki Wilcox's Web Developer.com Guide to 3D Avatars, available new and used from Amazon.com You can also scour the Web for the many freeware and shareware tools that are helping the dedicated group of 3D pioneers push the virtual envelope.

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Among many career paths and interests, Bonnie Bucqueroux acts as web doctor for Web specialists Newslink Associates (designers of City Pulse Online). E-mail us your questions and she will try to answer them in future columns.