Ken Perlin, professor at NYU, keynoted the first day of Future Play 2006. Here's a summary, with scattered commentary.
More and more people can participate in media creation these days, frequently by repurposing existing media properties. At the moment, much of this participation is that the level of the gimmick, but there is potential to refine participation in the future into something more masterful.
How do you recognize whether something is alive? One way is through facial expressions with noise. Static facial expressions look dead, but adding slight movement and variation makes them believable. Perlin shows a tool for generating facial expressions with noise. He says he was surprised to find this tool is being used to train people with Asperger's Syndrome to increase their ability to interpret facial expressions. He appreciates the culture of sharing and participation that enabled him to create a tool that would be repurposed by someone else.
The future of expressive characters is not about high polygon counts. To prove this, Perlin shows off a 3D triangle (five faces) that has been animated with a walk cycles. Sure enough, the primitive character seems to have personality.
Perlin wants to make media participation easier for the masses. He sees machinima as cumbersome today, but thinks it can be greatly improved with better tools. For instance, he shows off a tool for directing virtual actors. He gives them certain movements and directions key to the essence of the scene, and lets the program generate the space he left unspecified. This looks like a leap forward in animation to me.
Perlin also wants to address the gender gap in technology. He shows off a tool aimed at girls that allows them to program dance steps and music for virtual characters. It has a split window with programming on the left and display on the right, a lot like Star Logo.
He ends by reiterating his call to enable more media participation.
