Alice 3d – Create your own animations

Introduction

Alice is a freeware (for non-commercial purposes) object-based educational programming

language with an integrated development environment (IDE). Alice uses a drag and drop
environment to create computer animations using 3D models. The software was
developed first at University of Virginia in 1994, then Carnegie Mellon (from 1997), by a
research group led by Randy Pausch.
At this link: http://www.alice.org/index.php you can download Alice3.
Alice 3 is composed by two parts:

- The Code Editor, in which you can manipulate your code, and create the animation
itself;

- The Environment Setup, where you’ll edit your characters and setup the scenes that
compose the animation.

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 Create a new project and import objects to the landscape

- Open Alice and double click on a landscape (on the “Blank Slates” tab);

- Click on “Setup Scene” to add objects to the landscape;

- Select one of the classes (on the “Browse character by class hierarchy”);

- Click and drag the object on the landscape;

- Give the object a name (if it’s a person, another properties will appear and you can
also);

- Click on “Edit Code” to go back to the code editor;

- Click and drag the “Move” command to the editor and set its parameters to “UP”
and the duration to “0.5”;

- To test the project, click on the “Run” button;

- Now, save the project.

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 How to turn the camera or the Object

Probably, you already have Alice opened and an object on the ground. On this
guide you will learn how to turn a camera or object.

Turning the object to the camara:

- Select the object, in this case, the cow (called Azorean);

- Choose the instruction “turnToFace” and the target is this.camera.

Turning the camara to the object:

- Select the camera;

- Choose the instruction “turnToFace” and the target is this.Azorean.

Group options to work simultaneously:

Let’s make those last two options work together

- Add the option “do together” (which is at the bottom of the work area) and put all
the steps inside the code.

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 Moving parts of the cow and import audio to the project.

For this script we already had Alice 3 open and an object world.

Give a mouth to the cow:

- Click in the arrow under the preview screen;

- Choose this.Cow getMouth.

Go to procedures.

- In the position section select this.Cow Turn Foward Amount 1

Add audio to the project

- Go to the audio section, select playAudio

- And choose the audio you want.

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 How to add images to your virtual world.
Ground

- Run Alice 3 and choose any of the first options for your project;

- Then select this ground ;

- Drag and drop setPaint and put it on myFirstMethod,

- and choose “import image” to use your own images.

Billboards

- Change into the the Scene Editor;

- On the gallery choose “shapes/text” and pick new billboard;

- In the front paint you can select your image and use it on the back paint too.

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 How to turn your virtual world interactive
using keyboard

- Open your animation and go to the Code Editor;

- Click on the tab “InicializeEventListeners;

- Click on the “Add Event Listener” button and choose keyboard;

- Finally choose “addObjectMoverFor” and pick the name of the object you want to be
controlled by the user (through the keyboard).

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 To make a person walk you need to:
1) Use the variables

a) Then go to Value Type and put “Decimal

Number”
b) Then go to initializer and put a number.
c) Don’t forget to put a name!

At the end you should have the project like this:

Now, next to the “variable”, use “Do together” (That is in the same tab) and push it to the
project.

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(It should look like this now) and now use the actions of the person.

You need to find the action of “Left Shoulder” first and then make it to turn to left in the
amount of 0.03. Then you need to go to “duration” and put a random number.

After that push “Moving Time to the duration time.

You need to get the Shoulders, Hips and Ankles, like this!

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After that put the box of “do in order” in the “do together” box!

You also need to put the knees moving, so right now your project should be like this.

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Now use the variables again. This time instead of using Decimal Numbers use Whole
Numbers.

1. Now push the “While” in the tool bar.

2. The condition is “true”
3. Look closely to this step.

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Then push the “Variable Steps” to the box like this:

When you put the “steps” the variable you should put the code like this:

Now you have to copy 2 times “do together” and put it in the “while” box.

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 Be careful because there are some changes!

There are also new a new thing:

Now out of the “while” box put the “do together”

You can find the “StraightenOutJoints” Code here:

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Now, check if the code is like this:

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