Autumn Quarter Week 4 – Week 5

For week 4 on Friday we had a large group meeting. Marie and I did a practice presentation for everyone where we presented the poster we would show at Grace Hopper on the 3rd of October. After that, we practiced a bit more in the ASL transcriber program. I chose the word ‘breath’ and tried to get Paula to accurately portray it. It is just about completed.

Over the past week, I worked on creating a case to carry the poster for when we went to the conference. You can see it here:

This is the case about halfway completed.

This is the completed case.

The Conference itself went on between the 3rd and the 6th. We woke up quite early on Wednesday to catch our flight.

The flight was delayed for about an hour or so due to the weather.

Here is a picture of Marie and me at O’hare airport, taken by Dr. Wolfe.

Upon arriving at the convention center we set up the poster and explored a bit. The poster session lasted between 7:15pm and 10:00pm. Marie and I got to talk about it quite a bit to many different people. It was a lot of fun to be able to talk about what Marie and Allison had worked on last year and to be able to speak briefly on what we are working on this year.

Here we are with the poster, taken by Andrea Danyluk.

Overall, being able to attend the Conference was an amazing experience. I got to meet many different people and get a ton of information on all the different options that are available once I graduate.

Now that the Grace Hopper Conference is over with, it looks as though Marie and I will try to attend ChiWIC, Chicago Celebration of Woman and Computing, at the end of this month. On Friday, we were able to make time with Dr. Wolfe to put together an abstract for doing a Lightning Round presentation. We hope that we will be able to speak briefly on the work performed last year, but also on what we are currently working on this year.

I myself have not a had a lot of time to dedicate to Paula. Marie has had some time to test out the use of the ProOptimizer tool on Paula’s hair. It reduces the polygon count of the model and her appearance does not suffer very much. I will perform the same test as soon as I am able. I will then move on to the mouth region. With midterms this week, I may still not be able to dedicate as much time as I would like, but we’ll see how things go.

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Autumn Quarter – Week 3

Marie and I met with Dr. Wolfe on Friday. After examining Paula, we realized that there are a few key areas that have an excessively high number of polygons and vertices. Her feet, hair and especially her mouth. Over the next few weeks we are going to concentrate on her head. We plan to see if we can get her hair down to about 1000 polygons. Marie and I both will work on this and see what we can come up with. From there, we will move on to her mouth. It is to be hoped that reducing this number will aid in increasing real-time playback.

In addition, we are still preparing for the Grace Hopper Conference which takes place between October 3rd-6th. The poster will be printed in a few days and Marie and I will give a practice presentation at the group meeting this Friday. We are both looking forward to this opportunity and hope to do our best!

Autumn Quarter – Week 2

This week we had a group meeting with everyone. We talked about Marie and I preparing for the Grace Hopper Conference in October, and in two weeks we are going to do a practice presentation for the group. We had the opportunity to also hear about what the other groups are going to be working on over the next year.

For this meeting, we also had the opportunity to get hands on experience with the ASL Transcriber program. Marie and I will spend time getting used to the interface, but it’s already pretty apparent how slow it is when it comes to real-time playback. In order to get an accurate idea of how your signs are turning out, you must render it out, which takes a lot of time. We’re hoping our work will speed up the real-time playback so rendering is not necessary.

Last week Marie and I worked on creating a script that outputs the names of all the parts of Paula and also tells how many polygons are contained within each. Marie was able to prepare a script that works, and several parts, such as the hair and sweater, contain an excessively high number of polygons. For this week we will go through and scope out any stray parts of Paula that may not have been evaluated. We will also continue on getting prepared for the Grace Hopper Conference.

Autumn Quarter – Week 1

This is my first year working on the American Sign Language Synthesis project at DePaul University with Marie Stumbo. For this first week we met with Dr. Wolfe and have begun the process of moving toward a real-time playback. I was assigned the task of putting the finishing touches to the webpage explaining our project. We also have begun to look more closely at the avatar to find ways to simplify it. The first step is for us to determine the number of polygons contained within the avatar. If possible, the reduction of this count will be just one small step towards our overall goal.

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