Outstanding issues for Animgen

1. Outstanding issues for Animgen • 1. Improvements to animation quality • Raise the elbow to ease the wrist bending. • When the wrist goes to the head, the arm sometimes swings through the body. • When the hand changes its orientation, it should rotate about the wrist. • Further adjustment of thumb and finger bendings for each avatar. • More use of shoulders. • Improve the collision-avoidance. Vught RK 2004 Apr 1

2. Outstanding issues for Animgen • 2. Unimplemented features of HamNoSys: • Some specialised handshapes (crossing fingers, thumb between fingers). • Some non-manuals (shoulder and torso movements, eye gaze). • Some complex repetitions. • Locations behind the body. • Relative orientation (i.e. hand changes orientation to remain parallel to movement) • Alternating movement (both meanings of ~). Vught RK 2004 Apr 1

3. Outstanding issues for Animgen • 3. Ways in which HamNoSys should be used to work around limitations of Animgen: • Be as explicit as possible: • When specifying the location of a hand, say which point on the hand goes to that location. • When specifying a location, specify which side of the body part (e.g. Wrist: palmar, dorsal, radial, or ulnar. Cheek: left or right) • When moving to make a contact, always specify the contact. • Instead of relative orientation, specify hand orientation at beginning and end of the movement. Vught RK 2004 Apr 1

4. Outstanding issues for Animgen • 4. Further matters raised in discussion • When a static morph is specifed for a sequence of signs, it should be sustained throughout, and not go to zero between the signs. • Need a new type of movement meaning “hold this hand in its current position”. • Currently no provision for synchronising non-manuals with manuals within a sign. • Other unimplemented HamNoSys features: named locations, ipsilaterality, nondom-only signs, left-handed avatars. • Some non-manuals (e.g. eye blink) should be synchronised to the end of the sign. Vught RK 2004 Apr 1

5. Outstanding issues for animation • 5. Matters raised by Thomas Hanke’s presentation • Mouth gestures • Some not implemented, some need improvement. Inge has a list. Constanze finds a different set don’t work. • Mouthing • Consonant clusters • Word-final plosives • At present, about 1/3 of all SAMPA transcriptions need to be modified to give the right visual result. • Timing of co-occurring manuals and non-manuals. • If the non-manual part is shorter than the manual, the final non-manual should be held to the end of the sign. • Pauses • Hamrest is adequate; add something in SiGML to specify length of pause. E.g. add “duration” attribute (in units of either seconds or the standard movement duration) to every movement type. • Add <hold> movement type to mean sustain previous posture, and <wait> to mean go back to rest position. Vught RK 2004 Apr 1

6. Outstanding issues for animation • 6. Matters raised by Constanze the following morning • Gestures in which part of one hand meets the palm of the other sometimes go through the palm. She will send examples. The problem is that the handsite on the moving hand is not specified, and there are so many signs of this form that it is not practical to rewrite the transcriptions to make them all more explicit. • An example of some HamNoSys that wasn’t getting through Ralph’s translator. Vught RK 2004 Apr 1