• Educational Technology International
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• v.24 no.1
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• pp.1-27
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• 2023

This study aimed to examine an augmented reality-based teaching simulation in a mobile application. We examined how AR-enabled interactions affect users' perceived scenario usefulness and avatar realism. The participants were forty-six undergraduate students. We randomly grouped them into two conditions: AR and Non-interactive video groups with equal sample sizes. This study employed an experimental design approach with a one-way multivariate analysis of variance with repeated measures. The independent variable is the presence/absence of AR interaction with a mobile application. The dependent variables were avatar realism and scenario usefulness. The measures explored how the student avatar's emotional intensity in a scenario influences user perception. The results showed that participants in the AR-interaction group perceived avatar realism significantly higher than those in the non-interactive video group. Also, participants perceived the high emotional intensity scenario (aggression toward peers) to be significantly higher usefulness than the low emotional intensity scenario (classroom disruption).

• Journal of the Korean Society of Clothing and Textiles
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• v.48 no.5
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• pp.1024-1038
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• 2024

The "metaverse" refers to a three-dimensional virtual realm that provides immersive experiences to users through their avatars. In a metaverse, consumers can interact with other users and engage in real-life activities using their avatars. These avatars are visual depictions of the user with realistic or unrealistic animated features. This study investigates how the rendering quality of virtual stores in a metaverse, serially mediated by embodied presence and enjoyment, can increase the use intention of metaverse shopping platforms. Additionally, this study explores how avatar realism moderates relations between the rendering quality and embodied presence. An experimental study was conducted using a between-subjects design to investigate the effect of metaverse media richness through avatar realism (realistic vs. unrealistic). Participants were randomly allocated to view a stimulus, and a total of 205 valid responses were analyzed using AMOS 23.0 and SPSS Process Macro 4.0. The results suggest that the rendering quality has a greater impact on embodied presence, particularly when consumers experience environments featuring realistic avatars. In conclusion, high rendering quality and realistic avatars within the metaverse space enable consumers to experience greater enjoyment and more actively engage with metaverse shopping platforms.

• Journal of Korea Multimedia Society
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• v.17 no.9
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• pp.1076-1083
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• 2014

We propose an emotional facial avatar that portrays the user's facial expressions with an emotional emphasis, while achieving visual and behavioral realism. This is achieved by unifying automatic analysis of facial expressions and animation of realistic 3D faces with details such as facial hair and hairstyles. To augment facial appearance according to the user's emotions, we use emotional templates representing typical emotions in an artistic way, which can be easily combined with the skin texture of the 3D face at runtime. Hence, our interface gives the user vision-based control over facial animation of the emotional avatar, easily changing its moods.

• Journal of KIISE:Computer Systems and Theory
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• v.33 no.4
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• pp.231-241
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• 2006

Creating controllable, responsive avatars is an important problem in computer games and virtual environments. Recently, large collections of motion capture data have been exploited for increased realism in avatar animation and control. Large motion sets have the advantage of accommodating a broad variety of natural human motion. However, when a motion set is large, the time required to identify an appropriate sequence of motions is the bottleneck for achieving interactive avatar control. In this paper, we present a novel method for training avatar behaviors from unlabelled motion data in order to animate and control avatars at minimal runtime cost. Based on machine learning technique, called Q-teaming, our training method allows the avatar to learn how to act in any given situation through trial-and-error interactions with a dynamic environment. We demonstrate the effectiveness of our approach through examples that include avatars interacting with each other and with the user.

• The Journal of the Convergence on Culture Technology
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• v.8 no.4
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• pp.387-395
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• 2022

This study empirically studied the effect of the characteristics of consumer experience in a virtual store in the metaverse of a fashion brand on consumers' perceived utility and self-congruence for the medium. As a result of the analysis, all three factors (reality, ubiquity, anonymity) of the fashion brand metaverse virtual reality store experience had a significant positive effect on the perceived avatar consistency. On the other hand, realism and ubiquity had a significant positive effect on perceived fun, but the effect of anonymity on perceived fun was not significant. On the other hand, perceived avatar identity was found to have a significant positive effect on perceived consumer-brand self-congruence. Finally, it was found that the perceived fun in the metaverse fashion brand virtual reality store had a statistically significant positive effect on perceived consumer-brand self-congruence.

• Journal of Korea Game Society
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• v.8 no.1
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• pp.49-58
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• 2008

In this paper, we propose a texture generation scheme for 3D avatars from three or more human face photos. First, we manually mark image positions corresponding to vertices of a given UVW map. Then, a face texture is automatically generated from the photo images. The proposed texture generation scheme extremely reduces the amount of manual work compared with the classical methods such as Photoshop-based schemes. The generated textures are photorealistic since the textures fully reflect the naturalness of the original photos. The texture creation scheme can be applied to any kind of mesh structures of 3D models and mesh structures need not be changed to accommodate the given textures. We created face textures from several triplets of photos and mapped them to 3D avatar faces. Experimental results showed that visual realism of avatar faces is much enhanced by the face textures.

• Cartoon and Animation Studies
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• s.46
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• pp.181-206
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• 2017

In the near future, we are expected to live in a Mixed Reality environment where reality and virtuality coexist as today we live using the Internet and smartphones in our daily lives. The relevant content based on the idea of Mixed Reality crystallizing is currently expanding, and it is time for research on it. This study examines the current situation and the development direction of mixed reality contents. Typical mixed reality contents can be classify by wearability. We analyzed HoloLens, a mixed reality wearable device that is worn on a head, which is a example of wearable device. As an example of unwearable device, we also analyzed the Room2Room which is a communication system that combines video with augmented reality-based telepresence avatar. Mixed Reality content will develop in the direction of implementing expanded use of information and more natural realism through the interactive combination of Reality, Virtual Reality, and Augmented Reality. As head-mounted wearable technology develops, Mixed Reality content is expected to become popular by increasing the number of Mixed Reality device users if convenience and price competitiveness are secured. The way of unifying Mixed Reality wearable devices must be established in order to increase convenience, and the environment based on Mixed Reality will be created through diversifying leisure activity content. Telepresence Avatar is expected to develop into Mobile Hologram Avar as Mixed Reality content accessible anywhere and at anytime beyond space limits. Another potential for development of Telepresence Avatar is the combination of Avatar moving on user's thought, Augmented Human technology and Mixed Reality.

• Korean Journal of Cognitive Science
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• v.17 no.4
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• pp.357-373
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• 2006

Virtual reality (VR) provides a virtual experiment (VE) context consisting of information presented to the senses of the user. The user perceiver and interprets the VE context, and then naturally recognizes a level of realism in the VE. Presence is often thought of as the sense of 'being there' in the n. Presence includes overall feelings about the information conveyed from a virtual avatar to the user. Therefore, there must be brain mechanisms for integrating sensory information about presence.'Feeling of presence' is related with the user's cognition and perception about information on communication through medium. Thus 'feeling of presence' may characterize perceptual mechanisms in the brain. We studied these mechanisms by presenting a VR that consisted of an avatar telling a story about a social conversation. We performed covariance analysis on subjective brain activity (fMRI) during the story presentation with a presence score. The data analysis revealed that activity in several brain areas was correlated with the presence store. A positive correlation was shown in the right lingual gyrus, right cuneus, left lingual gyrus, right fusiform gyrus, left inferior temporal gyrus, anterior cingulate cortex and right posterior cingulate cortex of the brain. This study showed the brain mechanism to be related the feeling of presence and brain activities in our subjects, using VR to communicate information.

• The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
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• v.11 no.12
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• pp.19-27
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• 2011

The humanoid creatures like Na'Vi in 'Avatar' remind the audience of a few actors' faces in the movie, enhance realism in film through combining CG and Live action which are related to the story. The design of face-recognizable humanoid creature is expected to be used in many ways; not only in film, but also in newest media. This research proposes to apply the main concept of Caricature which is 'exaggeration' of distinctive face elements from their prototypes for 'likeness' with the subjects. Also, it provides the idea of extracting the distinctive features of a face and combining the exaggerated subject as those features with an imaginary creature-other species, alien, etc. Finally, it proves the effectiveness of the design process with some experiments.

• Journal of KIISE:Computer Systems and Theory
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• v.28 no.10
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• pp.499-506
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• 2001

Terrain Following means that a mobile object, such a user's avatar, must follow terrain, remaining in contact with the ground at all times in virtual environments. This makes a virtual environment have the effects of gravity. Terrain Following is often done using collision detection: however this is inefficient, because general collision detection solves a problem that is inherently more complex than merely determining terrain contact points. Many virtual environments avoid the expense by utilizing a flat terrain with a constant altitude everywhere. This makes a terrain following trivial, but lacks realism. This paper provides as algorithm and a data structure for a terrain following using a neighboring area search as a way to search neighboring polygons. Because this algorithm uses a pre-processing step that stores the terrain polygons for calculating, it results in reducing overheads to workstations that is used to construct and maintain a virtual environment. Consequently, workstation can be used to apply not only a terrain following but also other things.