Authors:
Junko Ichino
and
Kokoha Naruse
Affiliation:
Faculty of Informatics, Tokyo City University, Yokohama, Japan
Keyword(s):
Virtual Reality, Avatar, Creativity, Gesture-Based Direct Manipulation, Life-Size, First-person Perspective, Third-Person Perspective, Embodied Interaction.
Abstract:
Given the increasing importance of virtual spaces as environments for self-expression, it is necessary to provide a method for users to create self-avatars as they wish. Most existing software that is used to create avatars require users to have knowledge of 3D modeling or to set various parameters such as leg lengths and sleeve lengths individually by moving sliders or through keyboard input, which are not intuitive and require time to learn. Thus, we propose a system that supports the creation of human-like avatars with intuitive operations in virtual spaces that is targeted at novices in avatar creation. The system is characterized by the following two points: (1) users can directly manipulate their own life-size self-avatars in virtual spaces using gestures and (2) users can switch between first-person and third-person perspectives. We conducted a preliminary user study using our prototype. The results indicate the basic effectiveness of the proposed system, demonstrating that su
bstantial room for improvement remains in the guide objects that are used to manipulate the manipulable parts.
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