Digital
pop diva TMmy, unveiled by the Digital Animations Group,
due to sweep the charts and woo pop fans with her debut
single out in May, is the spearhead of a whole stable
of virtual computer-animated characters created by the
company.
They will include virtual bank managers, hotel and office
receptionists and characters able to read text in a very
human way, complete with serious and sad intonation when
the news to be imparted is of the bad news variety. Applications
for the on-screen characters include bank machines, information
kiosks and the internet.
The next DAG animated character to go public is likely
to be The Head, likely to star in a Channel 4 TV show.
The characters have a common ancestry. They are all created
using technology developed by top government defence scientists.
DAG is working with the defence agency Dera (Defence Evaluation
and Research Agency) to develop a whole range of virtual
characters using software and mathematics created for
defence purposes. Dera operates at the interface between
defence and the commercial worlds. One of the agency’s
functions is to help industry exploit the commercial applications
of defence technology and bring the best of commercial
technology into defence.
"TMmy
has been created to show what our technology can do,"
says Digital Animations chief executive officer Mike Hambly.
"Film and media students wanted to work in film and
television, not with firms like us, so we wanted to show
our industry was just as sexy as television. In five years
time it will all be digital. They’d be better off
working for a company like us."
TMmy had her first public outing in the world’s film
capital LA, at a huge computer show. "We demonstrated
TMmy at Comdex," Hambly says. "The men fell
in love with her, the kids loved her and people copied
her dace moves from the video we made, so we decided to
launch her as a popstar."
The defence technology incorporated in TMmy is in the
area of number crunching. Hambly explains; "We’re
using some of the the mathematics developed by Dera in
TMmy, but we are mainly working with them on things such
as artificial intelligence and context recognition that
will come in the next generation of our characters"
Some of the company’s ideas are being demonstrated
to banks and financial institutions now, so in the Digital
Animations world, how would a visit to see the bank manager
go?
"Our idea is a virtual bank manager," says Hambly.
"Customers can put their cards in an ATM machine,
key in a PIN number and interact with a virtual character,
which would be the same regardless of the machine. The
character would know all about the account and give decisions
on whether to extend an overdraft, for example and be
able to ask the customer intelligent questions."
The next generation is likely to be a holographic projection
of the virtual bank manager, able to recognise customers
through fingerprints or the retina of their eyes, and
for virtual receptionists to take name and appointment
details of visitors and pass on the information, automatically
dialling the right extension.
Digital Animations of Bellshill, just outside Glasgow,
was created ten years ago to make virtual walk-throughs
for architects.
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Digital
pop diva TMmy, unveiled by the Digital Animations Group,
due to sweep the charts and woo pop fans with her debut
single out in May, is the spearhead of a whole stable
of virtual computer-animated characters created by the
company.
TMmy
has been created to show what our technology can do,"
says Digital Animations chief executive officer Mike Hambly.
"Film and media students wanted to work in film and
television, not with firms like us, so we wanted to show
our industry was just as sexy as television. In five years
time it will all be digital. They’d be better off
working for a company like us."