From: Alan Taylor (yoame_at_WOLFENET.com)
Date: 28 July 1998
Thanks Jed,
Selected responses - more as way of explanation and shared frustrations...
On Tue, 28 Jul 1998, Jed Hartman wrote:
>
> The firelight on Raven at the start (and the crackle of the fire) is a
> superb effect, very realistic. The fire itself is less amazing -- would it
> slow things down too much to change the colors of the flames as well as the
> lighting? There was a certain amount of flame motion, but it didn't seem
> to quite match the lighting changes. (This is a very minor complaint, btw;
> I found no serious flaws in the piece.)
The firelight is simply a random nuber fed to a pointlight set_intensity, but the aggravating part is that it looks sooo different on differing speeds of machines. I demo-ed it on a speedy Intergraph, and the forest looked spastic rather than bathed in campfirelight, oh well, it's good enough. Interpolating the colors - probably would look nicer, but still wouldn't look like fire (IMO). I had already established a certain amount of iconography (flat trees), so I didn't think it was a big deal. The Flame motion has no relation to lighting or vice versa, it's all fakery.
I used many many tricks from early cinema for this piece, at times it felt like I was doing Raven and the Keystone Cops.
>
> The atmosphere is nicely spooky, with the modeling and lighting
> contributing heavily to that effect. The flat trees work well. All the
> models are good, but the witch is totally amazing, especially the color
> changes for the eyes. Her disappearing effect at the end is way cool. Oh,
> and I love the way the frog's eyes move in the closing sequence.
>
Thanks, lots of work in the details.
> The camera work is also excellent throughout.
>
> A couple of minor issues:
>
> 1. You suggested using a maximized browser. That turned out to actually
> be too big on the monitor I was using, resulting in two chunks of story
> text being visible at any given time, which confused me a lot at first. I
> tried again with a standard-sized browser and it looked just as good --
> maybe better, 'cause the frame rate was a little higher. (I did turn off
> the lights in my office, btw, and that definitely enhanced the
> effectiveness of the piece; good suggestion.)
You must have a big monitor! ;) I thought I had the bases covered there - it's easy enough to fix, thanks for the feedback.
>
> 2. Resizing the browser during play is definitely a mistake; you might
> want to warn people not to do this. (For me it caused the VRML to stop
> displaying, though the audio and text kept going. I compounded the problem
> by pressing the Back button a few times -- after which everything worked
> fine except that the audio track that had been running (Mink's running
> footsteps) kept going during the whole rest of the piece.)
>
Um, yeah, resizing with any VRML embedded content is usually a bad idea, esp. in this piece. A warning should come up front. Agreed.
> 3. On an early page, the text reads "...controlled a magic creature." It
> ought to say "controlled by a magic creature." (The phrasing of the text
> seems a little odd in a couple other places too, but nothing serious.)
>
A sleep-deprived typo. SIGGRAPH waits for no one.
> 4. The timing is a little weird on the sequence where Mink steals the
> stick and the witch notices. Synchronization of visuals and text doesn't
> seem quite right there.
>
This is actually a huge issue for the way I tried to do these two pieces. The text is controlled by a Javascript piece in the HTML, not in the VRML piece. This is due to the (eventual) compatibilities involved in porting this to WV2.1-friendliness. WV2.1 does not seem to like interoperating with HTML scripts and in-VRML scripts much. Since the VRML story is pushed along by an internal timer, and the page-turning is on a separate timing mechanism (both based on the same internal clock), problems almost always pop up. Sometimes the page-turning script just simply misfires, and some text is left out - why, I have no clue.
The biggest problem I have is that these are meant to be oral stories, but as a 7-minute non-streaming audio clip is prohibitive (and unreliable), I chose to use text, but I really hate having to split the viewers attention look left - read right - look left, etc. It's really tricky determining how long to display the text, when to pop it up, etc. Add to that the unpredictability mentioned above, and ugh... But it works well enough often enough for me to be happy.
> 5. Similarly, when the frog is resting after crossing the river, the
> witch's scream should come earlier; the frog gets a surprised look, then we
> cut to the witch, then she screams. I think it'd work better for the
> scream to come before the surprised look.
>
Again, a limitation of the medium - How hard it is to achieve subtlety. I meant for Frog to react to the silence. Crickets chirp throughout the river scene.. then suddenly stop. Frog is alarmed, then the Witch attacks. As a storyteller, I feel like I'm using a blunt stone rather than a chisel sometimes. Plus, if you have no audio, you have no idea why Frog reacts, so everything needs to work partly on a pantomime level as well.
> Anyway, those really are minor issues. I hope that the SIGGRAPH audience
> gave this piece the plaudits it deserves -- this is really superior
> content, among the very best VRML work I've seen.
>
Yes, thankfully I heard lots of great response to this - I feel especially good, not from an egotistical sense, but from the general praise for "...ahhh, how nice, a good story told well..." comments. No matter how much lip service is paid to "content", it doesn't hit home until someone actually feels entertained and is surprised by that feeling.
> ...Have you talked with Linda Hahner about this stuff? It seems to me this
> piece would make a great VRML kids' book -- not the same kind of content
> she's designing, but might appeal to some of the same audiences. The
> visual style reminds me of some picture books I've seen -- only animated
> and 3D, of course.
>
Yes, Linda and I chatted a bit at SIGGRAPH, not about that, but I think Raven works on many levels. Funny, it wasn't at all intentional, but as I was narrating the story at SIGGRAPH, I was struck by the possibility that this parable could be applied to a lot of what is happening in the New Media industry now - powerful things belong to everyone, only evil creatures hoard power, tools are essential and should be viewed as gifts and not hidden away. (Java, open-source movement, Cosmo, VRML, MS, etc.) Kind of a nice realization.
> thanks for pointing us to this!
>
> --jed
>
> PS: note return address. All mail to me should go to logos_at_kith.org; my
> SGI address will probably bounce starting today.
>
>
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