General Animation Gallery and Tutorial sections

**General Animation Gallery and Tutorial sections -** 10-22-2006, 06:57 PM

Re, animated and large avatars and signatures - I agree with Gabe that they are distracting - note I limited my example ( http://www.alice.org/community/showthread.php?t=419 ) to ten cycles.

Also, for people who are connecting via dial-up or other limited bandwidth connections, downloading large files of this type seems to be a poor use of what bandwidth they do have.

Having said that, I also think it is a shame not to have a place in the general forum for such thing, since Alice can do them as well or better than almost any of the free option out there, and certainly do them with much less effort. People with low bandwidth connections (or no intrest,

this is out of the main educational thrust of the Alice project) could avoid that section unless they had time for long or even, in some cases very long, downloads. If this is to hard in the existing forum format, how about a separate site?

What I'm thinking of is a "General Animation Gallery" where things made using Alice but converted to non-Alice formats could be posted and maybe even displayed. Which cases to display is TBD, but I personally would like to see animated GIF's displayed up to several hundred K. I imagine the "Building Virtual Worlds" web page designers could probably provide some guidelines. In addition to what they support, I would like to see the .avi format supported since that's what the recommended screen capture tool (BSR) uses and so far I've had good luck with it - Flash would also be useful.

While I'm making suggestions, how about a specific "Tutorials" section. Gabe has done a nice job in rearranging some things already

- but there still is a lot of good information in the Forum that can be a bit difficult to find - even if you can get through the "are you a human" test of the search engine. (I fail often enough that I'm beginning to wonder.

) I know I'd contribute some things and imagine several others would also.

10-23-2006, 08:56 PM

Come to think of it, is it possible to create tutorials like the basic ones that Alice already has? Is it java script, or something similar?
Also if it is Java script, perhaps you might consider creating an editor for creation of such tutorials for general use? I'm sure teachers would find this a great boon. And if you find that students are using it to cheat, just treat it like the answers to the exercises and require a password for access. That way the teachers can't complain.

Just a thought...

10:49 PM

When I wrote that I was thinking of something more like the "Tutorial Central" that Wings3D has. Lots of individual postings and active commentary, plus key word searchable - see for example the posting for .3ds file import into that program http://p212.ezboard.com/fnendowingsm...cID=2711.topic . I had almost given up on loading a file from Blender into Wings3D when I found that posting which gave a very simple solution - export in .obj format from Blender. Note that this started out as sort of a "Black Magic" thing

- but later comments added some of the why's.

I won't comment on " *** password limited access to educational material " other than to note that (beyond the basic need to control forum access to protect from malicious attacks - which is unfortunately very real

) such an approach is completely contrary to any concept I had for the tutorial section.

Re the mechanic's of an interactive tutorial similar to the ones in Alice - I have no idea how they were done. I do know that even a non-interactive tutorial of that type is a lot of work.

10-24-2006, 08:43 PM

What I had in mind was a tool allowing people like us to create tutorials that would show Alice users how to do some not so simple tasks. The password protection was given because of the very real possibility of a teacher getting an idea from one of the tutorials and deciding to use it in class. And wouldn't it suck if one student cheated and tracked down a tutorial that would show him how to do it exactly?
Perhaps password protection is a bit harsh however, that would keep people like DrJim and myself from being able to access it! Surely not an ideal situation.

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	#1 (permalink)
DrJim Guest Status: Posts: n/a	General Animation Gallery and Tutorial sections - 10-22-2006, 06:57 PM Re, animated and large avatars and signatures - I agree with Gabe that they are distracting - note I limited my example ( http://www.alice.org/community/showthread.php?t=419 ) to ten cycles. Also, for people who are connecting via dial-up or other limited bandwidth connections, downloading large files of this type seems to be a poor use of what bandwidth they do have. Having said that, I also think it is a shame not to have a place in the general forum for such thing, since Alice can do them as well or better than almost any of the free option out there, and certainly do them with much less effort. People with low bandwidth connections (or no intrest, this is out of the main educational thrust of the Alice project) could avoid that section unless they had time for long or even, in some cases very long, downloads. If this is to hard in the existing forum format, how about a separate site? What I'm thinking of is a "General Animation Gallery" where things made using Alice but converted to non-Alice formats could be posted and maybe even displayed. Which cases to display is TBD, but I personally would like to see animated GIF's displayed up to several hundred K. I imagine the "Building Virtual Worlds" web page designers could probably provide some guidelines. In addition to what they support, I would like to see the .avi format supported since that's what the recommended screen capture tool (BSR) uses and so far I've had good luck with it - Flash would also be useful. While I'm making suggestions, how about a specific "Tutorials" section. Gabe has done a nice job in rearranging some things already - but there still is a lot of good information in the Forum that can be a bit difficult to find - even if you can get through the "are you a human" test of the search engine. (I fail often enough that I'm beginning to wonder. ) I know I'd contribute some things and imagine several others would also.

	#2 (permalink)
Mr Nemo Guest Status: Posts: n/a	10-23-2006, 08:56 PM Come to think of it, is it possible to create tutorials like the basic ones that Alice already has? Is it java script, or something similar? Also if it is Java script, perhaps you might consider creating an editor for creation of such tutorials for general use? I'm sure teachers would find this a great boon. And if you find that students are using it to cheat, just treat it like the answers to the exercises and require a password for access. That way the teachers can't complain. Just a thought...

	#3 (permalink)
DrJim Guest Status: Posts: n/a	Not what I was thinking of but not a bad idea. - 10-23-2006, 10:44 PM When I wrote that I was thinking of something more like the "Tutorial Central" that Wings3D has. Lots of individual postings and active commentary, plus key word searchable - see for example the posting for .3ds file import into that program http://p212.ezboard.com/fnendowingsm...cID=2711.topic . I had almost given up on loading a file from Blender into Wings3D when I found that posting which gave a very simple solution - export in .obj format from Blender. Note that this started out as sort of a "Black Magic" thing - but later comments added some of the why's. I won't comment on " * password limited access to educational material " other than to note that (beyond the basic need to control forum access to protect from malicious attacks - which is unfortunately very real ) such an approach is completely contrary to any concept I had for the tutorial section. Re the mechanic's of an interactive tutorial similar to the ones in Alice - I have no idea how they were done. I do know that even a non-interactive tutorial of that type is a lot** of work. Last edited by DrJim; 10-23-2006 at 10:49 PM.

	#4 (permalink)
Mr Nemo Guest Status: Posts: n/a	10-24-2006, 08:43 PM What I had in mind was a tool allowing people like us to create tutorials that would show Alice users how to do some not so simple tasks. The password protection was given because of the very real possibility of a teacher getting an idea from one of the tutorials and deciding to use it in class. And wouldn't it suck if one student cheated and tracked down a tutorial that would show him how to do it exactly? Perhaps password protection is a bit harsh however, that would keep people like DrJim and myself from being able to access it! Surely not an ideal situation.