3D User Interfaces for General-Purpose 3D Animation

Draft submission, Appeared as "3D User Interfaces for General-Purpose 3D Animation"Modern 3D animation systems let a growing number of people generate increasingly sophisticated animated movies, frequently for tutorials or multimedia documents. However, although these tasks are inherently three dimensional, these systems' user interfaces are still predominantly two dimensional. This makes it difficult to interactively input complex animated 3D movements. We have developed Virtual Studio, an inexpensive and easy-to-use 3D animation environment in which animators can perform all interaction directly in three dimensions. Animators can use 3D devices to specify complex 3D motions. Virtual tools are visible mediators that provide interaction metaphors to control application objects. An underlying constraint solver lets animators tightly couple application and interface objects. Users define animation by recording the effect of their manipulations on models. Virtual Studio applies data-reduction techniques to generate editable representations of each animated element that is manipulated.71-78Pubblicat

VB2: an architecture for interaction in synthetic worlds

This paper describes the VB2 architecture for the construction of three-dimensional interactive applications. The system's state and behavior are uniformly represented as a network of interrelated objects. Dynamic components are modeled by active variables, while multi-way relations are modeled by hierarchical constraints. Daemons are used to sequence between system states in reaction to changes in variable values. The constraint network is efficiently maintained by an incremental constraint solver based on an enhancement of SkyBlue. Multiple devices are used to interact with the synthetic world through the use of various interaction paradigms, including immersive environments with visual and audio feedback. Interaction techniques range from direct manipulation, to gestural input and three-dimensional virtual tools. Adaptive pattern recognition is used to increase input device expressiveness by enhancing sensor data with classification information. Virtual tools, which are encapsulations of visual appearance and behavior, present a selective view of manipulated models' information and offer an interaction metaphor to control it. Since virtual tools are first class objects, they can be assembled into more complex tools, much in the same way that simple tools are built on top of a modeling hierarchy. The architecture is currently being used to build a virtual reality animation system.167-17

Building an interactive 3D animation system

The continued improvement and proliferation of graphics hardware for workstations and personal computers has brought increasing prominence to a newer style of software application program. This style relies on fast, high quality graphics displays coupled with expressive input devices to achieve real-time animation and direct-manipulation interaction metaphors. Such applications impose a rather different conceptual approach, on both the user and the programmer, than more traditional software. The application program can be thought of increasingly as a virtual machine, with a tangible two or three dimensional appearance, behavior and tactile response. Dynamic graphics techniques are now considered essential for making computers easier to use, and interactive and graphical interfaces that allow the presentation and the direct manipulation of information in a pictorial form is now an important part of most of modern graphics software tools211-24

Narcissism and the strategic pursuit of short-term mating : universal links across 11 world regions of the International Sexuality Description Project-2.

Previous studies have documented links between sub-clinical narcissism and the active pursuit of short-term mating strategies (e.g., unrestricted sociosexuality, marital infidelity, mate poaching). Nearly all of these investigations have relied solely on samples from Western cultures. In the current study, responses from a cross-cultural survey of 30,470 people across 53 nations spanning 11 world regions (North America, Central/South America, Northern Europe, Western Europe, Eastern Europe, Southern Europe, Middle East, Africa, Oceania, Southeast Asia, and East Asia) were used to evaluate whether narcissism (as measured by the Narcissistic Personality Inventory; NPI) was universally associated with short-term mating. Results revealed narcissism scores (including two broad factors and seven traditional facets as measured by the NPI) were functionally equivalent across cultures, reliably associating with key sexual outcomes (e.g., more active pursuit of short-term mating, intimate partner violence, and sexual aggression) and sex-related personality traits (e.g., higher extraversion and openness to experience). Whereas some features of personality (e.g., subjective well-being) were universally associated with socially adaptive facets of Narcissism (e.g., self-sufficiency), most indicators of short-term mating (e.g., unrestricted sociosexuality and marital infidelity) were universally associated with the socially maladaptive facets of narcissism (e.g., exploitativeness). Discussion addresses limitations of these cross-culturally universal findings and presents suggestions for future research into revealing the precise psychological features of narcissism that facilitate the strategic pursuit of short-term mating

Narcisismo y búsqueda estratégica del emparejamiento a corto plazo a través de las culturas: Enlaces omnipresentes a través de 11 regiones mundiales del Proyecto de la descripción de la sexualidad internacional 2

Previous studies have documented links between sub-clinical narcissism and the active pursuit of short-term mating strategies (e.g., unrestricted sociosexuality, marital infidelity, mate poaching). Nearly all of these investigations have relied solely on samples from Western cultures. In the current study, responses from a cross-cultural survey of 30,470 people across 53 nations spanning 11 world regions (North America, Central/South America, Northern Europe, Western Europe, Eastern Europe, Southern Europe, Middle East, Africa, Oceania, Southeast Asia, and East Asia) were used to evaluate whether narcissism (as measured by the Narcissistic Personality Inventory; NPI) was universally associated with short-term mating. Results revealed narcissism scores (including two broad factors and seven traditional facets as measured by the NPI) were functionally equivalent across cultures, reliably associating with key sexual outcomes (e.g., more active pursuit of short-term mating, intimate partner violence, and sexual aggression) and sex-related personality traits (e.g., higher extraversion and openness to experience). Whereas some features of personality (e.g., subjective well-being) were universally associated with socially adaptive facets of Narcissism (e.g., self-sufficiency), most indicators of short-term mating (e.g., unrestricted sociosexuality and marital infidelity) were universally associated with the socially maladaptive facets of narcissism (e.g., exploitativeness). Discussion addresses limitations of these cross-culturally universal findings and presents suggestions for future research into revealing the precise psychological features of narcissism that facilitate the strategic pursuit of short-term mating.Estudios previos, en primer lugar a través de las muestras de culturas occidentales, han documentado asociaciones sistemáticas del narcisismo subclínico con múltiples indicadores de estrategias del emparejamiento a corto plazo (p. ej. sociosexualidad ilimitada, infidelidad, caza de pareja). En este estudio se han usado respuestas de la encuesta transcultural de 30.470 personas de 53 naciones de 11 regiones mundiales (América del Norte, América del Sur/América Central, Europa del Norte, Europa del Oeste, Europa del Este, Europa del Sur, Oriente Próximo, África, Asia del Sur/Sudoeste de Asia, Asia del Este y Oceanía) para evaluar si el narcisismo (medido por el Inventario de Personalidad Narcisista; NPI) se asocia panuniversalmente con los indicadores del emparejamiento a corto plazo, tanto en la dirección, como en la intensidad. Los resultados sugieren que el narcisismo (incluidos muchos aspectos suyos medidos por el NPI) tiene las mismas asociaciones básicas con los rasgos de personalidad relacionados con el sexo (p. ej. extraversión alta) y con los resultados sexuales claves (p. ej. búsqueda más activa de las estrategias del emparejamiento a corto plazo) a través de las 11 mayores regiones mundiales del PDSI 2. La discusión se enfoca en las implicaciones y limitaciones del estudio actual

Sketching 3D Animations

... using straight-ahead actions as well as pose-to-pose techniques. Our approach seeks to bring the expressiveness of real-time motion capture systems into a general-purpose multi-track system running on a graphics workstation. We emphasize the use of high-bandwidth interaction with 3D objects together with specific data reduction techniques for the automatic construction of editable representations of interactively sketched continuous parameter evolution. In this paper, we concentrate on providing a solution to the problem of applying data reduction techniques in an animation context. The requirements that must be fulfilled by the data reduction algorithm are analyzed. From the Lyche and Mrken knot removal strategy, we derive an incremental algorithm that computes a B-spline approximation to the original curve by considering only a small piece of the total curve at any time. This algorithm allows the processing of the user's captured motion in parallel with its specification, and guarantees constant latency time and memory needs for input motions composed of any number of samples. After showing the results obtained by applying our incremental algorithm to 3D animation paths, we describe an integrated environment to visually construct 3D animations, where all interaction is done directly in three dimensions. By recording the effects of user's manipulations and taking into account the temporal aspect of the interaction, straight-ahead animations can be defined. Our algorithm is automatically applied to continuous parameter evolution in order to obtain editable representations. The paper concludes with a presentation of future work

Virtuality Builder II: On the Topic of 3D Interaction

Most of today's user interfaces for 3D graphics systems still predominantly use 2D widgets, even though current graphical hardware should make it possible to create applications in which the user directly manipulates aspects of three-dimensional synthetic worlds. The difficulties associated with achieving the key goal of immersion has led the research in virtual environments to concentrate far more on the development of new input and display devices than on higher-level techniques for 3D interaction. It is only recently that interaction with synthetic worlds has tried to go beyond straightforward interpretation of physical device data (NSF 1992), (Balaguer and Mangili 1992). The design space for 3D interaction tools and techniques remains mostly unexplored, while being far larger than in standard 2D applications. Moreover, as stated by Myers, "the only reliable way to generate quality interfaces is to test prototypes with users and modify the design based on their comments" (Myers 1989, p 15). 15). The creation of complex interactive applications is an inherently iterative process that requires user interface tools, such as toolkits or frameworks

i3D: A High-Speed 3D Web Browser

In this paper, we present i3D, a system that combines the 3D input and high-performance rendering capabilities of high-end virtual reality systems with the data fetching abilities of network browsers. Using a Spaceball, the user can intuitively navigate inside the three-dimensional data, while selecting 3D objects with the mouse triggers requests for access to remote media documents that can be text, still images, animations or even other 3D models. Time-critical rendering techniques allow the system to display complex 3D scenes at high and constant frame rates, making it possible to use it in the context of large scale projects. The system is currently being used at CERN as a visualization and data management tool for the design of the new Large Hadron Collider, and at CRS4 for the Virtual Sardinia project and in the networked educational system IPERLER i3D is available through anonymous ftp from various sites on the Internet

I3D: An Interactive System for Exploring Annotated 3D Environments

In this paper, we present I3D, a system that combines the 3D input and high-performance rendering capabilities of high-end virtual reality systems with the data fetching abilities of network browsers. Using a Spaceball, the user can intuitively navigate inside the three-dimensional data, while selecting 3D objects with the mouse triggers requests for access to remote media documents that can be text, still images, animations or even other 3D models. Time-critical rendering techniques allow the system to display complex 3D scenes at high and constant frame rates, making it possible to use it in the context of large scale projects. The system is currently being used at CERN as a visualization and data management tool for the design of the new Large Hadron Collider, and will be used at CRS4 in the networked educational system IPERLER