June 2022 Update
Last month, we posted here that Auranos.org was going Virtual Reality
and produced an early demonstration of our engine which demonstrated our
ability to rotate a matrix and render a polygon. This month, we release
the pre-alpha version 0.2 which shows our ability to animate whatever
"polygon soup" we hand to our engine.
The polygon soup in this instance happens to be amateurishly modelled
by a software engineer, the best of which are the humans which were modelled
by renderpeople.com
who provide models constructed of so many polygons that we aren't sure if
someone's device will fall over before rendering, so we have had to signficantly
reduce the polygon count of these models, which leads to certain aspects
showing up that makes the whole think look a little less presentable than
it ought to be. Our goal here is to demonstrate the technology, which shows
interpolated vertice animations on both Sophia, the lady holding her phone,
and ALFI, the miming mask inside the lab.
As well as interpolated animations, we also demonstrate regular multi-model
animations in the form of a car which we have programmed to drive repeatedly
around the two blocks of the park and the lab.
If you go to the pond and look carefully, the water IS actually moving.
Although it doesn't look too realistic such as the kind of water texture
you will see in engines such as Source (Half-Life), Creation (Fallout)
or Crytek (Farcry), it is early days and this is the first introduction of
animated textures (to be distinguished from video textures). It uses an
algorithm created be Adrian Boeing for 2D environments and is employed at
present merely as a proof-of-concept that rippling water effects can be
produced from time derived mathematical forumlas.
Again I have uncluded Synthia and Andy, the statuesque models from the
"Home of the Sky People". These models have been reworked and cost around
7000 polygons each, compared to the 20,000 polygons they were running at
in the version 0.1 release. Unlike, Sophia, the phone lady, they are of a
quality suitable for release now, albeit that they are not yet animated.
Each "synth" (as I like to call them) doesn't just carry a cost in terms
of computation performance but since they are modelled by professionals and
will be voiced by professional voice actors and of course animated by yours
truly, there will be a financial cost per synth used on each website. The
more synths, the more costly the website will be.
Webite Sales
Moving toward business, we are considering the bog standard website to
be one synth inside one room with standard fittings (office or shop). The
synth will communicate textually according to a standard set of scripts we
will provide such as
What do you sell? |
We have a variety of goods for sale. Would you like to look at |
our [insert catalogue section here], |
our [insert catalogue section here], |
or our [insert catalogue section here]. |
I'm interested in your [insert catalogue section here]. |
We pride ourselves in procuring |
[insert sub-section here], |
and [insert catalogue section here]. |
Would these be of interest to you? |
[insert sub-section here] look good. |
We have |
{stock level} [insert item]{s} available, |
{stock level} [insert item]{s} available, |
and {stock level} [insert item]{s} available. |
The customer would then click on the item and details about the
item would pop up with a buy button. This is of-course just one of several
scripts which would include answering questions about the company or
privacy policy and such like.
The bog standard website would basically be a 3D navigated ordinary web
site but the scripts can be fleshed out by the customers themselves by the
addition of audio to match the scripts being said by both the customer and
the synthetic assistant and the scripts themself can be enhanced. Howwever
due to the nature of what a synth is, the speech would not be lip-synched
and might look a little unrealistic as though the lips are moving but not
in accord with the sounds which are being heard. Once the basic assets are
produced, bog standard websites can be rolled out in a week, maybe even a
couple of days at a push. Estimated price of around £500 per site but the
expectation is that the customer will fill out alot of the blanks in the
same manner as creating the options on a call centre telephone robot.
For more money we can do this for them!
In addition, the customer will be able upload wavefront object files of
their products (such as those exported from the windows 3D viewer app). If
a product has a model, and is in the stock catelogue, it will appear on an
appropriate shelf inside the virtual shop. The model can be something as
simple as a box with the item name written on all sides or "a teapot" (which
is programmers language for a complex three dimensional shape. There are
existing markets for 3D models which we can direct our customers to if they
want their products modelled. There are even services where a customer can
have themself turned into one of our synths.
For more money we can do this for them!
All websites will have this bog standard capabilities but higher quality
sites will have more work perfomed on them such as we can cover the the
entire stock list and any question a customer might ask through a voice
actor or voice actress and the customer can speak with a larger variety of
synths with voices and appearances they might find more ... appetate(?).
The stock catalogue can be produced by a simple SQL join statement to
the customeres current stock catalogue, with the joined table including
the extras such a three dimensional model, audio tags for the syths to use
when saying the name or details of the item.
Business Retention
Customers needs change as their product list changes. Once they have
purchased a license to the software, it is their software to use as they
see fit and it will include an API such that they can upload their content
such as 3D models of their merchanise, synth scripts and audio of the things
that their synths will say. They can do these things all by themself and the
API and its web interface will make this as easy as possible but it is a time
consuming task that a teapot factory might prefer to contract out to others.
As a central hub for the type of things these website owners will want
we will be in a key position to sub-contract their needs to the best artists
we can find. If you have the talent, register with the site (2D) and put
something on your profile suggesting you have some talent we can use. Make
sure you fill out your email address (which will not be shown) incase the
site is set to not require email addresses for registrations. You can also
phone me on the Auranos.org Number +44 07903 064488
for enquiries.
As pre-alpha version 0.2 is released
As we go into the third month of development of the Auragine engine,
this second update demonstrating last months progress on an engine which
now shows the qualities which are normally only available on high end
computer games, but with the goal of presenting such a user interface as
bespoke web sites for companies moving toward "Web 3.0". (It's getting all
very Matrixy, Neo!)
The latest update is available on WebGL enabled browsers such as Firefox,
Edge, Opera, Chrome and Safari and you can sample the engine for yourself
right here:The Auranos.org Virutal Reality Engine.
Auranos.org detects that you are not using a browser which supports WebGl.
As most browser`s support this functionality, we assume you are using a
mobile browser, in which case we recommend you visit the website when you
get home. In some circumstance`s, you may find your browser has WebGL disabled
by default, in which case you may be able to access settings by way of a url
like "about:config" and find the setting to enable WebGL. WebGL is disabled by
default on older browsers which support WebGL since it was then considered to be
experimental.
It is highly recommended at the current development stage to use a desktop
or laptop as some features will not be supported on touchscreen devices at
the time of writing but you should still be able to see some of what has been
achieved so far, even on an old Android.
The development environment is Xubuntu 18.04 using Firefox 92 as the
main test platform, however, it has been tested to work on Edge under the
latest version of Windows 10 and is expected to be working on all modern
browsers.
The fifth of the month has been set as the deadline for these pre-alpha
releases as this is the day on which those funding the work expect to hear
reports on. If you want to fund development, to gain shares in the engine's
deployment and access the source code, free from obfuscation and copyright
protection mechanisms, you should contact Auranos.org by phone on
+44 07903 064488.
Shares are also available to those willing to contribute their time to
the engine. At present there is an urgent need for:
JOBS
- Modeller: Someone who can create low polygon photorealistic models,
such as humans with polycount of 5k-7k created without the use of an
optimiser which tends to throw the vertices into hard to predict
positions. As you can see from my current effors, I'm not much of a
modeller and had to rely on Free
Content From Render People to produce the eventual badly drawn
animated humans on display. The modeller will be more than capable
of producing models of manmade objects and will be a source of advice
on terrain texturing. The modeller will receive a chunk of any payments
for websites which employ the modellers work.
- Sound Engineer: Someone who can create music tracks and sound
effects with a variety of themes such as the crazy bell music in a
1970s supermarket or the background hum of a traffic heard by website
visitors in a virtual office. These sounds will not need to be stereo
mastered as this will be done by the engine. The sound engineer will
be responsable for all audio used by the engine and will receive a
chunk of the payment from customers whose websites employ the sound
engineers work. The sound engineer will liaise with the voice actors.
- Marketeer: Someone who can find people who have the kind of cash
to pay for a cutting edge website and the motivation to do so. These
websites will be at the top end of market where users will enter the
website and interact in a manner not dissimilar to the user interaction
in a role play game but rather than killing zombies and upgrading
robots, the "player" will simply be shopping using a 3D interface
assisted in the questions by synthetic human assistants which may in
future support online portals such that the assistants can be
"inhabited" by an actual human, speaking to an actual customer. This
is just to give you an idea of the vision. Payments will be processed
in 2D through a third party (most likely Paypal). The marketeer will
be paid a commission on all websites which are sold.
- Voice Actors/Actresses: Our synthetic human's will have scripts
for frequently asked questions that shoppers have and will be able to
to count from "zero" to "nineteen", "ten", "twenty", "thirty", "forty",
"fifty", "sixty", "seventy", "eighty", "ninety", "hundred", "thousand"
and "million". Once business has been generated by the marketeer, the
most suitable voice actors will be selected and given a one time
payment for the basic script all the synths will have but our customers
will have specific requirements such as product details and the voice
actors selected will be given a chunk of the payment for each website
where their work has been deployed.
- Programmers: Javascript ECMA 6.0, no JQuery, no external
libraries, no google code, full stack(ish), able to make sense of PHP
but not neccessarily proficient. No SQL required etc, mainly JS but
code must be correct, concise and efficent. Demos? Able to produce
bug free classes/methods which work efficiently and according to
specifications. The programmer will be paid a chunk of websites where
their code is employed according to the post-obfuscation char percent
of the full source code produced by the programmer. The code will be
closed source and will not engage in online communication with outside
service providers in order to function, except in cases where the
specification explicitly requires it.
- Boss: Someone who can do all the bureaucatic stuff required by
funders and government agencies, making sure everyone involved is paid
accurately and every customer we serve is paying us accurately and that
we have accurately fulfilled their expectations to the extent there
will be business retention as the products, needs and wants of our
customers change. The manager will get a chunk of the payments for work
generated by the marketeer and the purpoise will be to prevent stalls
in productivity caused by the various things which are irrelevant to
the factory floor (so to speak).
Remember all these jobs are paid in shares of profits from each
website sold or "as and when required". There's no guaranteed wage as
in a regular job. If you are willing to work under those conditions,
and there are other jobs that you think you could do that we havent
considered, drop us a line on +44 07903 064488.