Re: Of interest to the HM group.

[Niclas Olofsson <gurun@acc.umu.se>]

Welcome Andrew,

VHML is indeed interesting for many of us in HumanML. Some of us have
our background in VRML and hanim. Reading the spec of VHML makes me
curious just how tangent some of your efforts are with respect to
mpeg-4. Noticed you have at least one guy in your project that knows
mgepg(-7?). hanim has a close relationship to mpeg and seem to match
some of your efforts too.
IMHO if VHML would really help if some of the markup would be decoupled
from the rendering. <smile> for example could prehaps explain the
intention of the element (smile), but not really explain exactly how it
should be performed. As an example (probably bad) if I wanted to model
cromango humans I'm not sure that showing your teeth would be the
expected rendering/behavior of the <smile> element.

This worries me. Len has been complaining that we are getting to much
into implementational stuff lately. As far as I can tell, it's really
only one thread and it was in respect to SW as far as I can tell. But
with respect to systems like VHML I fear that he might be right.
Speaking only for myself I see HumanML on at least two levels in VHML.
First as a system jacking in somewhere between the media parsing and
expression interpretation. I think a HumanML profile would be possible
to use to better interpreter how to parse and generate the correct
expression that is going to be communicated. The second place I see
HumanML profiles is to control how an expression will be rendered (see
above). Implementational as I am I had a pretty clear picture of where
HumanML would do most good. Now I see at least two good places, and they
are on different layers. Hmm, need to go back to the drawing board
again.


Cheers,
/Niclas


raytrace@smtp.cs.curtin.edu.au wrote:
> 
> Hi
>   >
> Joe Norris wrote:
>   >Much attention has been drawn to the myriad applications for HumanMar=
>   >kup and it's associated specifications and technologies. Considering =
>   >the nearly inexhaustible scope for HumanMarkup endeavors I would like=
>   >to propose that somehow within the OASIS TC process we develop a sub=
>   >committee/process/steering group/workflow management/etc that can ref=
>   >ine the process for determining research efforts for various HumanMar=
>   >kup applications.
> 
> As a way of introduction to this list, I am currently researching an XML
> based language for directing a Virtual Human. I am a full partner in a
> European Union 5th Framework project called InterFace that is concerned
> with Human Computer Interface issues and one aspect of this is the
> production of computer generated Talking Heads. Our group has developed and
> implemented VHML - a Virtual Human Markup Language. This language marks up
> text that the Talking Head would read and adds tags such as <happy>,
> <look_left> <smile> etc so that the voice and the head displays these
> emotions/gestures. You may find examples of audio produced this way as
> well as movies of the Talking Head at www.vhml.org
> The emotion and gesture tags are quite convincing.
> For those interested, we also have journal articles, conference papers and
> upcoming book chapters which talk about the language.
> 
> An initial draft of the VHML document can also be found at that site
> although this is really an in-house version which is currently undergoing
> modification for verification/validation of the language. It uses the W3C
> format and has added to the W3C document describing the Speech Synthesis
> Markup Languauge (i.e it blatantly uses that document since the Text to
> Speech sub-language of VHML uses SSML). The next version of the document
> should be available before the Sept 17th meeting.
> 
> I have monitored this list for a while and I am not certain if what we do
> is appropriate to what you talk about but we are committed to evolving our
> language to cater for the types of things that a Human would be able to
> do. The HM group seems to be more interested in descriptive rather than
> directive markup but the two do come from the same basic knowledge.
> 
> I am happy to provide my expertise in this very practical area of
> Human Markup for any Technical Committee. If the powers that be are
> interested in what we do and what we have learnt and can use that
> expertise, then please contact me and I will be happy to assist.
> 
> My next 5th Framework meeting in Europe is at the end of September and I
> intend to report on what the Human Markup group is doing and how we can
> fit in with their efforts.
> 
> Thanks for your time.
> 
>         Andrew Marriott.
>         Senior Lecturer.
> 
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