Because I never come up with interesting topics (or that often)....
Following up on You Are Truth's post about avatars, it would seem that you may have to follow a dress code for your avatar when at use in the office.
I suppose this isn't to be unexpected; especially if you consider the kinds of things that some people will pick for their icons. Lets just hope that the various companies out there recognize that there's a degree of creativity to them and are designed to represent that individual's tastes.
I had heard long long ago (well maybe not that long ago) that there were some plans to try and make avatars able to cross more boundaries. In other words you're avatar designed in WoW would be able to interact with one in Second Life, or IMVU.... Scary thought, maybe all those 3D modeler's out there will be able to freelance work out to design your unique look.
Just some food for thought!
Thursday, October 8, 2009
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Posts
1 comment:
Ah, those lovely "thought leaders" are looking into the future again and revealing such wonderful tidbits. *censors thoughts for the sake of politeness*
*pops forehead vein*
On the other hand, it does seem pretty obvious that if companies are going to be doing business on the Internet the use of avatars will become more common at some point. I know a number of librarians are doing reference desk work over text chat and some are even doing it in Second Life spaces. More than likely a smart company that is going to institute a "dress code" is far more likely to give the representative a company account with a look already picked out. People in marketing are going to want to control the "look" representing the company. Personal avatars are all about self-expression, but if you're in a virtual space on the clock I don't think that qualifies as a personal avatar. It is more like a company car.
The idea of cross-site avatars is interesting and there is at least some potential for this. Most virtual realities today are not even close to being "Web 2.0" ready though. We'd need standards in place to make these things possible. The current generation of avatars just won't cut it. If they can come up with standard mesh definitions, texture mapping standards, rigging standards, and the like then we'll see this.
Interesting Densetsu:
I remember talking about the challenges of supporting multiple avatar rigs with one virtual world company at a convention. They had settled on a single bipedal rig after previously considering two or three rig setup to allow for more variety. They really wanted to have multiple rigs, but the cost was prohibitive. Their product used cooperative animations, multiple avatars participated in the same animation sequence to give a sense of coherence without requiring players to exactly position the avatars and time their actions.
The problem? Their technology used static animation to make development of new animations simple for third parties. By static, I mean the animations were defined strictly by moving the participating rigs individually, not based on any complex procedures to try to coordinate body parts (for example hands meeting in a high-five). With a single rig, there was only one static animation needed for each action. If they had supported two different rigs, properly coordinating the avatars would require four different animations for an animation involving only two avatars. The permutations just get worse from there when having to support more different rigs or more participants.
So the lesson is, if avatars are really going to interact realistically then we have a ways to go to make developing coordinated animation more designer friendly. There are tools for this, just not accessible tools for the average content developer. But that is another story all together :D
Post a Comment