The Rebirth of Web 3D

This article first appeared in the December 1998 issue of 3D magazine

By Chris Manners

It wasn't that long ago that VRML was being touted as the 3D promised land on the Web, but with the withdrawal of such big players as SGI, it appeared that we'ed never make it across the border.

In recent months, 3D on the web has regained momentum. This time, though, VRML is flanked by a fleet of alternative ways to deliver 3D online. The new vehicles, while owing a huge debt to their predecessor, are based on proprietary technologies. Forces such as Intel are at the helm, and a slew of content developers are taking another shot at creatin interative 3D content online.

Currently the dominant uses of 3D on the web point toward entertainment, distributed computing, and e-commerce. We decided to take a look at a number of high-end projects, focusing on one in each area.

Protozoa, one of the pioneering developers of 3D puppetry and cartoons, recently licensed their Ask Dr. Science content to Warner Brothers. Part of a bigger initiative that includes 3D cartoons of Marvin the Martian and Floops, the project could be described as a repurposing of content for web 3D: Dr. Science was originally a radio show on National Public Radio. There's talk of extending the Dr. Science character with merchandise deals and delivery through other media types.

Just a click away, Visualize is mplementing the first example of real- time, collaborative 3D modeling. The ability for multiple users in different locations to join a session and together work on a 3D model creates efficiencies in time, process and work flow. We can expect to see even more examples of this type of 3D whiteboarding in the future.

The last example, e-commerce driven by 3D content, is perhaps the biggest long shot of the three: whether a 3D virtual model of a toy is more likely to encourage a sale than a simple static image has yet to be determined. Nonetheless, the ExciteExtreme's Holiday Shop is part of a broader attempt to bring Web 3D to the masses. It's encouraging to see that a sizable amount of effort is being expended to determine 3D's role on the Web, and the ExciteExtreme initiative is both broad-based and well funded.

Wait a minute. Haven't we heard all this before? Weren't similar promises made about VRML 2.0 -- and then dashed with its rapid demise? Things are different now, argue the proponents of these projercts. For one thin, the Java Virtual Machines that ship with 4.0 versions of the common browsers are now very robust (yes, even on the Mac), and developers have determined ways to deliver 3D content without the pesky download and restart after installing plugins. This alone will ease the acceptance of 3D on-line.

Still, truth be told, the technologies behind Protozoa's Dr. Science, Visialize, and ExciteExtreme are nascent, and they're motivated by forces other than a groundswell of grassroots support. It remains to be seen if the general public will embrace Web 3D with open arms, Meanwhile, and content providers are still looking for the killer app. Perhaps one of the projects profiled in these pages -- perhaps all three of them -- will turn out to be it.

Entertainment: Protozoa & Pulse
If you've ever found yourself listening to a question from someone in Cambridge, MA, about whether you'd fly backwards if you jumped up inside a flying airplane and heard the answer "Yes," then you've heard Dr. Science dispense his invaluable wisdom. Once a radio show on NPR, he's now available on the Web in animated 3D.

Dr. Science, who still claims to use his trusty old TRS-80, is animated with mocap data through the proprietary Alive system.

San Francisco-based Protozoa was approached by Warner Brothers to create a series of comics and for the Entertaindom web site (www.entertaindom.com) and settled on three characters for development: Floops (origionally created y Protozoa and revamped for this project), Warner Bros.' own Marvin the Martian, and Dr. Science. Starting with characters and scripts that were alreay flushed out got the project off to a quick start. It was settled very quickly that the cartoons would be delivered using the self-installing Pulse Player from Pulse Entertainment.

Dr. Science first appeared in 1985, pontificating on such issues as creating life with Jello. Initially a presentation of Ducks Breath Mystery Theater live production, the good doctor quickly moved to NPR. Protozoa contacted Ducks Breath Mystery Theater, which has a collection of over 3,000 recordings. With the audio and scripts already produced, Protozoa's first step was to design the character. Working with designers at San Francisco's Wild Brain (www.wildbrain.com) to create a sketch for the development of the character, the company was able to come up with sufficient content for 50 web episodes in a relatively short period of time.

Dotcomix, a wholly owned subsidiary of Protozoa, acts as both a content provider and a producer, while Protozoa is the content creator and developer. Eventaully, other companies may be contracted to develop other characters to be delivered via DotComix, but Protozoa is currently its sole content developer. Revenue is earnt from licensing and subscription fees for the characters and some characters have been licensed to Warner Brothers' entertaindom.com website( Dr. Science and Floops).

Marvin the Martian was an unusual variation in that Protozoa doesn't usually work for hire, preferring to develop its own characters. In Marvin's this case the company remained in control of the content and production process, but all stages of Marvin's development had to be cleared through Warner Brothers Classic Animation. This meant that all creative materials had to go through a rigid approval process, including scripts, voice talent and so on.

Picking Targets
Protozoa targets an audience within the 18-39 age group, for which the company has developed a palpable stylistic edge. There are plans for kid and teen sites, although, according to Tom Laskawy, Director of Operations for Dotcomix, Protozoa is primarily looking for a mature audience. The Dr. Science project demands as close to a TV experience as possible, requiring an audience with high-powered computers. While the content can play on a 166MHz Pentiumprocessor, it is targeted for a 200 MHz Celeron or higher. The playback benchmark is based on frame rate, with the minimum acceptable rate being 8fps. A fast processor can achieve rates of up to 30fps can be achieved, and the Pulse Player also takes advantage of Direct 3D to boost performance. (The Pulse Palyer is available for Macintosh and Windows 95/98/NT.)

Currently the animations are embedded in a static browser window. Pulse plans to introduce scalable windows in the future for those with a 56k connection and faster. The Marvin the Martian, however, was specified to be deliverable at slower modem speed. The Entertaindom minimum connection is a 56k modem. File sizes range from 140k to 232k , but since the Pulse system streams the data, the amount of information that needs to be buffered is only a portion of the actual file size. In addition to the Pulse Player, the entertaindom.com requires the Flash 4.0 plugin . The site performs browser plugin negotiation to determine if a viewer can see the content. It redirects browsers that lack the requisite tools to a download page.

Development Process
The first phase of the design process for the Dr. Science project was to create a character for the disembodied radio voice. Protozoa decided to use some of the artists at San Francisco-based Wild Brain to produce the initial character sketches. These model sheets, with front, side and three-quarter views of Dr. Science, were then passed onto Protozoa's modeler. Because of its ability to create low polygon models, Nichimen N-Worls and Mirai were used to model the character.

The Nichimen model was then imported into Protozoa's proprietary software, Alive, for performance animation. (Protozoa designed ALive to generate 3D characters in realtime, one of its uses being to provide virtual hosts for broadcast. However as needs have changed, the company has been able to adapt the program for other uses.) The wirist, in Protozoa term, wired the model for real-time perfoormance animation by adding a series of control points and correlating them to a series of points on a motion capture suit. In general, Protozoa's' web characters require at least 11 sensors, but since Dr. Science was a waist-up character only 5-8 sensors were needed.

Often Protozoa's' Wirist will perform the character on the motion capture stage. In case of Dr. Science, two brothers co-directed the show, one, Lev Yilmaz, acting as the character in realtime, and the other (Emre Yilmaz) directing and monitoring the motion capture process. At the same time, there was another puppeteer with a different set of control points for facial animation using a joystick and sliders.

Lipsync was done separately a using freeware package called Magpie from Third Wish Software. After setting all the morph targets, digital puppeteers performed all the facial characteristics, including the eyebrows. Magpie assigned phonemes to specific facial movements.

One of Alive's advantages provides is that the program is able to overlay and change out tracks after capturing the performance. This post-production capability adds a great deal of flexibility for finetuning. Protozoa were able to perform ten 35-45 second Dr. Science pieces per day on the motion capture stage. These ten performances took around four hours on stage, leaving the remainder of the day for refinement, edit decisions and file format conversion.

In the original radio shows, a host asks Dr. Science questions in a fairly flat voice. Protozoa created a sidekick to perform in this capacity -- a small sock puppet tcalled Rodney. Rodney's motions were created using a small motion capture puppet and the arms were moved by procedurally two sensors on the upper and lower mouth.

After the performances were captured and data assigned to the model, all the motion, model and texture data was converted to the Pulse format. Pulse provides a tool for authoring called Creator that is keyframe-based, but Protozoa opted to write plugins for Alive to export files to the Pulse format.

Why Pulse?
Protozoa choose Pulse for a number of reasons, foremost because it allowed the streaming of both audio and animation data, and was able to keep the two streams in sync. Although Alive was used to create VRML characters such as Floops, and the Dr. Science follows the same production path, VRML had the disadvantage of requiring the entire file to be downloaded and preloaded into cache before playback. With the Pulse technology, the model file downloads separately and remains in cache. If consecutive animations are viewed, the later episodes require downloading only audio and the animation data. This allows the benefit of making subsequent viewings of additional episodes require less of a wait since only the new animation data is loaded.

Unlike VRML, though, Pulse offers a limited amount of interactivity. It's possible to drag and rotate Dr. Science and Rodney's heads, but that's all. Gradually, Pulse is moving towards incorporating more interactive behaviors, but within the context of linear cartoons, Protozoa is bound to move cautiously down the interactive path.

Dr. Science's sidekick, Rodney, was developed by Protozoa specifically for the Entertaindom.com website.

From a business standpoint, Dr. Science has been a 3D web success. He's available exclusively from entertaindom.com and is providing Protozoa with a distinct revenue stream. Reports of the traffic and downloads are on the increase.

The success of the technology can be measured by how many people have downloaded the player, and determining how many times a specific animation has been watched. Over time, plugin downloads have decreased, while the numbers of downloaded cartoons continues to increase. At the same time, there has bee a considerable amount of user feedback has been accrued. Entertaindom.com has recieved a substantial quantity of fan mail and the "Send a Cartoon to a Friend" feature gets a great deal of use.

According to Protozoa, most people are watching from work during business hours. All it takes is to install a 200k (no restart required). Warner Bros. is pushing the Dr. Science brand forward. A variety of different opportunities are currently being considered, including live character appearances with the Alive technology and press conferences online. Actually, it's entirely possible that you'll be seeing much more of Dr. Science. There may even be a Dr. Science toy in your Christmas stocking next year.

The complete text of this feature article, including the portions that cover 3D on the web for engineering (Visualize and Co-Create), as well as the 3D e-commerce section detailing ExciteExtreme's Holiday Shop are available on request from the author.

Chris Manners is the director of design at LimeVoodoo Productions, a San Francisco–based digital design and motion graphics studio.