Outstanding issues for Animgen

1
Outstanding issues for Animgen

• 1. Improvements to animation quality
• Raise the elbow to ease the wrist bending.
• When the wrist goes to the head, the arm
  sometimes swings through the body.
• When the hand changes its orientation, it should
  rotate about the wrist.
• Further adjustment of thumb and finger bendings
  for each avatar.
• More use of shoulders.
• Improve the collision-avoidance.

Vught RK 2004 Apr 1
2
Outstanding issues for Animgen

• 2. Unimplemented features of HamNoSys
• Some specialised handshapes (crossing fingers,
  thumb between fingers).
• Some non-manuals (shoulder and torso movements,
  eye gaze).
• Some complex repetitions.
• Locations behind the body.
• Relative orientation (i.e. hand changes
  orientation to remain parallel to movement)
• Alternating movement (both meanings of ).

Vught RK 2004 Apr 1
3
Outstanding issues for Animgen

• 3. Ways in which HamNoSys should be used to work
  around limitations of Animgen
• Be as explicit as possible
• When specifying the location of a hand, say
  which point on the hand goes to that location.
• When specifying a location, specify which side
  of the body part (e.g. Wrist palmar, dorsal,
  radial, or ulnar. Cheek left or right)
• When moving to make a contact, always specify
  the contact.
• Instead of relative orientation, specify hand
  orientation at beginning and end of the movement.

Vught RK 2004 Apr 1
4
Outstanding issues for Animgen

• 4. Further matters raised in discussion
• When a static morph is specifed for a sequence
  of signs, it should be sustained throughout, and
  not go to zero between the signs.
• Need a new type of movement meaning hold this
  hand in its current position.
• Currently no provision for synchronising
  non-manuals with manuals within a sign.
• Other unimplemented HamNoSys features named
  locations, ipsilaterality, nondom-only signs,
  left-handed avatars.
• Some non-manuals (e.g. eye blink) should be
  synchronised to the end of the sign.

Vught RK 2004 Apr 1
5
Outstanding issues for animation

• 5. Matters raised by Thomas Hankes presentation
• Mouth gestures
• Some not implemented, some need improvement.
  Inge has a list. Constanze finds a different set
  dont work.
• Mouthing
• Consonant clusters
• Word-final plosives
• At present, about 1/3 of all SAMPA
  transcriptions need to be modified to give the
  right visual result.
• Timing of co-occurring manuals and non-manuals.
• If the non-manual part is shorter than the
  manual, the final non-manual should be held to
  the end of the sign.
• Pauses
• Hamrest is adequate add something in SiGML to
  specify length of pause. E.g. add duration
  attribute (in units of either seconds or the
  standard movement duration) to every movement
  type.
• Add ltholdgt movement type to mean sustain
  previous posture, and ltwaitgt to mean go back to
  rest position.

Vught RK 2004 Apr 1
6
Outstanding issues for animation

• 6. Matters raised by Constanze the following
  morning
• Gestures in which part of one hand meets the
  palm of the other sometimes go through the palm.
  She will send examples. The problem is that the
  handsite on the moving hand is not specified, and
  there are so many signs of this form that it is
  not practical to rewrite the transcriptions to
  make them all more explicit.
• An example of some HamNoSys that wasnt getting
  through Ralphs translator.

Vught RK 2004 Apr 1