Alice

Demos Interactive Eat the Bunny (Lee) Movie Halloween Greeting Card

Alice.org Visual programming environment Storytelling/movies Game programming

Alice.org Makes it easy to do 3D movies and interactive animations Fun and intuitive programming model you can see the objects you are programming Highly visual programming environment don't have to memorize syntax Why the name Alice? she's the central character in Lewis Carroll’s classic children's story Alice in Wonderland

Alice FREE! http://www.alice.org Load and run a world Names ending in .a2w are Alice programs a2w is an abbreviation for alice 2 world Two kinds of animations Movie: passive user watches the animation Interactive: active user interacts with keyboard and mouse Chapter 1 http://faculty.harrisburgu.net/~paris/cis120/alice_reading_1.pdf Chapter 2 http://faculty.harrisburgu.net/~paris/cis120/alice_reading_2.pdf

Basic Concepts in Alice Virtual world: an animation is implemented in Alice as a virtual world Object: basic entity in Alice that has features. Dimensions and directions: each object in Alice has Dimensions: height, width, depth Directions: up, down, forward, back, left, right Center of an object: at the center of mass Objects can be retrieved from Local gallery, or Web gallery

Basic Concepts in Alice (cont) Distance: distance between two objects is measured from the centers Location: in a 3-D space, described by a triplet (x,y,z). The center of the ground is at (0,0,0) Animation: you develop a set of commands (methods) for each of the object in your world to interact with each other, creating an effect of animation

Objects

Objects objects In Alice, an object is (usually) visible and it has a name may have sub-parts that are also objects has properties such as width, height, color, location can perform methods (actions) on command has functions that allow programs to obtain information about the object

Objects Three dimensions: height, width, depth Six degrees of freedom (types of movement) 3 moving: forward/back left/right up/down 3 turning: roll: sideways around forward back axis pitch: up/down yaw: left/right

Objects Center Of mass: On ground: Where it is held

Storyboard and Scenes Scene Number: Sketch Description: Sound: Text:

Alice Tutorial Start with Tutorial 1 Shows you how to use the program

A Whole New World File > New World Templates tab double click desired template

Add Objects Click on “Add Objects” pick from gallery

Object Parts Objects may be composed of parts they are accessible through the object browser (upper left)

Save your world File > Save World Saves as .a2w file Save FREQUENTLY Animation is processor intensive, can crash

What you can do… Generic Alice: Storytelling Alice: Caitlin Kelleher Move Turn Roll Resize Play Sound Move to Move toward, Move away from Orient to Turn to Face, point at Set point of view to Set Pose Stand up Move at speed, turn at speed, roll at speed Constrain to face, Constrain to point at Storytelling Alice: Say, think Walk to, Walk offscreen Walk Sit On Lie on Kneel Fall Down Stand Up Straighten Look at Look Turn to face, Turn away from Turn Touch Keep Touching Caitlin Kelleher

Alice Techniques The mouse is used to approximately position objects in the scene Camera navigation is used to set the camera point of view Object drop-down menu used for many things including resizing objects more precisely position objects in the scene Quad view is used to position one object relative to another object 2-D text: http://faculty.harrisburgu.net/~paris/cis120/alice_tips.pdf

Alice is “real coding” Alice Code Java Code

The Future: Alice v3.0 Been in development for almost a year; will release in 2008. Driven by Caitlin Kelleher’s findings about storytelling make movies (or videogames) Real Java Alice v3.0 is a Java IDE, based on eclipse will see real Java (if you choose) Drag & Drop or type -> it’s up to you! Insanely high production values: as good as real video games We are developing a textbook along with the system Just as we did with Alice v2.0 Wanda Dann, Steve Cooper, Randy Pausch and Don Slater EA has given us $300,000* and permission to use the characters and animations from “The SimsTM 2” in Alice v3.0

The First Public Demo of Alice v3.0 with the SimsTM! This scene was rendered in Alice v3.0