Education system using interactive 3D computer graphics (3D‐CG) animation and scenario language for teaching materials

Abstract

The 3D computer graphics (3D‐CG) animation using a virtual actor’s speaking is very effective as an educational medium. But it takes a long time to produce a 3D‐CG animation. To reduce the cost of producing 3D‐CG educational contents and improve the capability of the education system, we have developed a new education system using Virtual Actor. It includes a 3D‐CG stage, many kinds of stage parts (3D‐CG shaped models, photographs or text panels) and Virtual Actor(s). Virtual Actor is a software robot of various shapes based on 3D‐CG and speech synthesis. Virtual Actor speaks English/Japanese by voice synthesizer with facial expressions and body actions. We have developed two kinds of education system, one is a Cyber Assistant Professor (CAP) and another is a Cyber Theater (CT). CAP has been designed for a self‐learning system, which enables interactive communication between Virtual Teacher and learner. CT has been designed for a 3D‐CG story maker, which is a new 3D‐CG media player, attractive enough to arouse the pupil’s interest. We also have developed the exclusive scenario language to write a scenario of 3D‐CG animation. It is a tag‐based hypertext language like HTML. Both CAP and CT convert this scenario to real‐time interactive 3D‐CG animations, which are not rendering movies. This paper describes the system architecture of CAP and CT, details of scenario language and results of experimental lessons.