Building Interactive 3D Characters and Social VR

This course is part of Virtual Reality Specialization

Instructors: Prof Sylvia Xueni Pan

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Assessments

4 assignments

Taught in English

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There are 4 modules in this course

Meeting another person is one of the most amazing experiences you can have in Virtual Reality. It is quite unlike communicating through any other medium except a real life face-to-face conversation. Because the other person is life size and shares a virtual space with you, body language works in a way that cannot be done on a flat screen. This course will enable you to create realistic social interactions in VR.

You will learn about both the psychology of social interaction and the practical skills to implement it in Unity3D. We will take you through the basics of 3D character animation and how to create body language. You will learn about how to make characters that can respond to players’ speech and body language. You will also learn about avatars: the virtual representation of other players, and agents: computer controlled NPC characters and how to implement both of them. As many people have said before us, social is the future of VR. This course will help you become part of the future of Virtual Reality social experiences.

In this module you will start to learn about the role of human-like characters in VR. Characters can represent other real people: avatars, or they can be computer controlled: agents. Either way they are the very foundation of social interaction in VR.

What's included

10 videos6 readings2 assignments4 discussion prompts

10 videosTotal 70 minutes

Introduction to Social VR and Virtual Characters5 minutesPreview module
Virtual Characters | Realism5 minutes
Agents and Avatars5 minutes
Applications of Virtual Characters11 minutes
Introduction to Character Animation3 minutes
Cristina5 minutes
Designing Virtual Characters7 minutes
Importing a Virtual Character to Unity8 minutes
Embodiment in Unity using Mobile VR15 minutes
Project Briefing2 minutes

6 readingsTotal 60 minutes

Uncanny Valley10 minutes
Course Blog10 minutes
Getting Started in Unity10 minutes
Where to Download Virtual Characters10 minutes
Unity Mecanim Tutorial10 minutes
Virtual Character Project Brief10 minutes

2 assignmentsTotal 60 minutes

Virtual Characters Quiz30 minutes
Planning your project30 minutes

4 discussion promptsTotal 40 minutes

Introduction to Virtual Characters10 minutes
Virtual Character Realism10 minutes
Agents and Avatars10 minutes
Virtual Character Application10 minutes

In this module you will learn about the role of the body in social interaction and also about how to animate and control virtual characters' body movements.

What's included

12 videos4 readings1 assignment1 peer review4 discussion prompts

12 videosTotal 67 minutes

Introduction to Body Language1 minutePreview module
Introduction to Skeletal Animation5 minutes
Introduction to Motion Capture3 minutes
Speech7 minutes
Posture and Gesture4 minutes
Backchannel4 minutes
Sensing the User’s Body Language2 minutes
Proxemics2 minutes
Body Language for Avatars5 minutes
Applying Motion Capture Data onto a Virtual Character10 minutes
Speech Interaction11 minutes
Gesture Interaction7 minutes

4 readingsTotal 40 minutes

Markerless mocap10 minutes
Bodily Communication10 minutes
Where can you find Mocap data10 minutes
The Virtual Character Interaction Scripts10 minutes

1 assignmentTotal 30 minutes

Body Movement30 minutes

1 peer reviewTotal 60 minutes

Virtual Character60 minutes

4 discussion promptsTotal 40 minutes

Observe other's body language.10 minutes
Motion Capture10 minutes
Gestures10 minutes
A great example of body animation10 minutes

The face is one of the most important social and emotional signals. In this module you will learn about the role of the face and eyes in social interactions and how to recreate them in VR.

What's included

7 videos3 readings1 assignment4 discussion prompts

7 videosTotal 58 minutes

Introduction to Facial Expressions | The Psychology5 minutesPreview module
Introduction to Facial Expressions4 minutes
Introduction to Facial Expression in Unity19 minutes
Blinking and Lip Sync Animation5 minutes
The Importance of Gaze in Social Interaction4 minutes
Gaze Interaction15 minutes
Other Facial Features and Their Psychological Effect4 minutes

3 readingsTotal 30 minutes

Interaction Scripts10 minutes
Facial Animation: find out more10 minutes
Gaze Animation10 minutes

1 assignmentTotal 30 minutes

Facial Expressions30 minutes

4 discussion promptsTotal 40 minutes

Facial Motion Capture10 minutes
A great example of facial animation10 minutes
A great example of gaze animation10 minutes
Body language around the world10 minutes

This module brings together everything you have learned about virtual characters to talk about how you can build truly social experiences in VR.

What's included

7 videos6 readings1 peer review2 discussion prompts

7 videosTotal 22 minutes

Introduction to Social VR1 minutePreview module
The Psychology Behind Social Interaction4 minutes
Challenges in Human-Avatar Interaction4 minutes
Challenges in Human-Agent Interaction4 minutes
Evaluation of Social Interaction in VR3 minutes
Self-Avatar | Implementation and Applications3 minutes
Summary of Social VR1 minute

6 readingsTotal 60 minutes

Automatic Imitation10 minutes
Extended reading: applications using Virtual Characters10 minutes
Human-avatar: Social VR apps10 minutes
Human-agent interaction10 minutes
Embodiment - implementation and psychological effect10 minutes
Thank you10 minutes

1 peer reviewTotal 60 minutes

Interactive Virtual Character60 minutes

2 discussion promptsTotal 20 minutes

How does social interaction work?10 minutes
Challenges in Human-avatar interaction in VR10 minutes

Instructors

Instructor ratings

4.9 (9 ratings)

Prof Sylvia Xueni Pan

University of London

5 Courses130,982 learners

Offered by

University of London

Goldsmiths, University of London

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4.4

81 reviews

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Reviewed on Jun 6, 2020

This course is great and really recommended if you have some experience using Unity

Reviewed on Jul 25, 2020

I am immersed in this VR course, This course has proved as a 4 step towards my VR understanding journey I highly appreciate the entire team for such mindful Vr tuting

Reviewed on Mar 4, 2018

This was a fun course. Needed much more time than expected.

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