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ALIAS RESEARCH VIDEOS

Bill Buxton

I became Chief Scientist of Alias Systems of Toronto in June of 1994.  About a year later the company was acquired by Silicon Graphics (SGI) of Mountainview CA, and merged with Wavefront Technologies of Santa Barbara CA.  The company was renamed Alias|Wavefront, and I became Chief Scientist of the merged company, as well as its parent (SGI).  I remained in that position until I resigned in December 2002.

During my time at Alias, my objective was to show that a relatively small company could do pure research, and make it worthwhile.  I put together a small team that largely grew out of my Input Research Group (IRG), from the University of Toronto.  The deal was that part of our self-imposed job description was that we had to maintain our research credentials (ie, publication record in the peer reviewed literature) at a standard that would enable us to get tenure at any top university computer science department.  At the same time, we had to generate patents, and develop ideas that were relevant to product.  Ambitious, but we actually managed to do this.

Below are a number of video clips that illustrate our work.  Where appropriate, you will find links to the related publications.

Interaction is all about dynamics, and video and cinematic form in general, are critical to helping foster better communication and literacy.  Hence, you are encouraged to copy and share any of this material for non-commercial, educational, and research purposes.  Please just cite the source.

As usual, comments and suggestions are always welcome.


Note:  To play any of the videos, just click on the associated thumbnail.   I am in the process of uploading full-resolution copies of these videos onto YouTube.  If the video that you want to play is still in low-res Flash, contact me and I will attempt to upload it ASAP.  For your information, all of the videos that I have uploaded onto YouTube appear in the channel: wasbuxton.


"Stop" Animation Using MIDI Controlers
(2 min. 52 sec.)
Alias|Wavefront Research
1995
This is a demonstration of using MIDI sliders to control the pose of a character, and MIDI transport controls to record those poses as key frames, and scrub along the time line to the location where the next keyframe is to be controled.  The effect is the ability to do "stop", or keyframe animation, where the mechanics employ everyday skills. 
Utilizing the Existing Skills of the Artist in a Paint Program 
(2 min. 52 sec.)
Alias|Wavefront Research
1995
This is a demonstration of a paint program, Studio Paint, augmented by some new user interface techniques.  These include semi-transparent dialogue boxes, two-handed input, "click-around" menus, and marking menus.  The net result is that almost all of the screen is clear for art, as opposed to UI widgets, and that the artist "holds" the tool palette in their non-dominant hand, and are also able to "hold" and move the "paper" with the same hand, leaving the dominant hand free to draw and paint using the stylus.
The Active Desk & Prototyping the Future
(2 min. 52 sec.)
Alias|Wavefront Research
1995
This short clip demonstrates a paint program that is implemented on a large drafting-table format display.  One of the key points that it makes is: to engineer the future tomorrow you have to have lived in it yesterday.  Prototypes such as this are the main way to do so.
A  2-Handed Jog/Shuttle Control
(2 min. 32 sec.)
Alias|Wavefront Research
1995
This is a demonstration of using a 6DOF isometric joystick (the LogiCad Magellan) as a pseudo jog/shuttle controller.
A Bi-Manual Paint Program
(3 min. 17 sec.)
Alias|Wavefront Research
1996
This video illustrates a novel 2-handed paint program.  One hand holds a stylus for painting, and the other holds a puck which is used to control sweeps which can be used as stensils, snap-to guides, or masks in air brush technique.  The approach mimics the everyday skills of traditional painting, drawing and airbrushing.
Ligne Claire
(1 min. 16 sec.)
Thomas Baudel
1995/6
This demonstrates the Ligne Claire, a marking-based technique for drawing splines.  With it, one can edit, or modify a drawn line by drawing the change over it, rather than manipulating control points, etc.

Ref:
Baudel, T. A Mark-based Interaction Technique for Free-Hand Drawing. Proceedings of the ACM UIST’94 Conference on User Interface Software and Technology, 185-192.

Desk-Top Motion Capture using MIDI 
(7 min. 29 sec.)
Alias|Wavefront Research
1996
This shows some examples of performance, or "go" animation, on the desktop, using MIDI controllers.  It shows how techniques from music recording, such as muti-tracking, can be applied to animation.  Rather than just describe a motion, via animation curves or key frames, the user is able to show the motion directly, using a physical controller.
T3: A Prototype 2-Handed Drawing Program 
(10 min. 19 sec.)
Alias|Wavefront Research
1997
This is a video demonstration of a prototype 2D drawing package, T3  which employed 2 hands, toolglass palettes and marking menus.

Refs:
Kurtenbach, G., Fitzmaurice, G., Baudel, T. & Buxton, W. (1997). The design and evaluation of a GUI paradigm based on tabets, two-hands, and transparency. Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing System (CHI '97). New York: ACM, 35-42.

Related work: [1]

2 Handed 3D Sculpting
(2 min. 15 sec.)
Alias|Wavefront Research
2000
This video demonstrates a prototype user interface that enabled people to work with 3D geometry in a way that largely mirrored how people sculpt with clay.  In essence, one held the model being scuplpted in the non-dominant hand, and the sculpting tool in the dominant hand.

Refs:
This video  is the only documnetation of this work. 

Related work: [1]

The Portfolio Wall
(1 min. 59 sec.)
Alias|Wavefront Research
1999
  12 sec. demo (no sound)
This clip introduces the prototype Portfolio Wall, what might be called an "awareness server" for sharing work amongst a design team.  It is a visualization tool designed to take advantage of some of the emerging networking and large format display  technologies.
Portfolio Wall and the Society of Appliances
(4 min. 7 sec.)
Alias|Wavefront Research
2000
Ref:
Fitzmaurice, G.W.,  Khan, A., Buxton, W., Kurtenbach, G. & Balakrishnan, R. (2003). Sentient Data Access via a Diverse Society of Devices. ACM Queue, 1(8), 53-62.
The Crosspad:  Integrating a Pen and Paper with the Digital Process
(1 min. 8 sec.)
Alias|Wavefront Research
1999
The Cross Pad, from A.T. Cross Ltd., was a commercially available electronic clipboard which enables users to draw on paper, and at the same time have their work captured electronically, since the clipboard was a digitizing tablet with a microprocessor and memory.  This prototype demonstrated how this technology can be integrated into the workflow of the design studio, and is an example of the move to ubiquitous computing.
A Props-Based UI for Automotive Visualization on Large Format Powerwalls
(4 min. 18 sec.)
Alias|Wavefront Research
1999
This video demonstrates a prototype props-based user interface that enabled automotive executives to have direct control of visualizations during design reviews that use large format displays  known as Powerwalls.

Refs:
This video  is the only documnetation of this work. For related work, see: [1] [2]

2D Digital Tapedrawing
(2 min. 33 sec.)
Alias|Wavefront Research
1999
This video demonstrates a novel bimanual technique for drawing on large wall-sized displays.  The technique is exploits the skills used in a drawing technique used in automotive styling called Tape Drawing.

Refs:
Balakrishnan, R., Fitzmaurice, G., Kurtenbach, G., & Buxton, W. (1999). Digital tape drawing. Proceedings of the ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology (UIST'99), 161-169.

Related Work: [1] [2]

3D Tapedrawing
(4 min. 33 sec.)
Alias|Wavefront Research
2000
This video builds upon the work in the previous demo.  It demonstrates how traditional Tape Drawing.skills can be extended to the creation of 3D models.

Refs:
Grossman, T., Balakrishnan, R., Kurtenbach, G., Fitzmaurice, G, Khan, A. & Buxton, W. (2001).  Interaction techniques for 3D modeling on large displays.  Proceedings of the 2001ACM Symposium on Interactive 3D Graphics, 17-23.

Related Work: [1] [2]

Semi-Immersive Interactive Visualization in a Concave Dome
(1 min. 31 sec.)
Alias|Wavefront Research
2000
This video demonstrates a prototype  user interface for selecting and controlling visualizations in a large format dome display. It demonstrates the use of the Portfolio Wall as a component in the UI.

Refs:
Fitzmaurice, G.W.,  Khan, A., Buxton, W., Kurtenbach, G. & Balakrishnan, R. (2003). Sentient Data Access via a Diverse Society of Devices. ACM Queue, 1(8), 53-62.

Related Work: [1]

Boom Chameleon
(2 min. 5 sec.)
Alias|Wavefront Research
1999
This demonstrates an approach to Virtual Reality that does not involve caves or head-mounted displays.  It provides a  kind of interactive 3D kiosk that can be used to view and comment on 3D designs.

Ref:
Buxton, W. & Fitzmaurice, G.W.(1998). HMD's, Caves & Chameleon: A Human-Centric Analysis of Interaction in Virtual Space, Computer Graphics: The SIGGRAPH Quarterly,  32(4), 64-68.

Related Work: [1] [2]

Boom Chameleon with Portfolio Wall UI
Alias|Wavefront Research
2002
The brief demo illustrates the integration of the Portfolio Wall as a user interface for other types of interaction.  Here it is used as a browser front-end to select the 3D model that is to be viewed on the Chameleon.

Ref:
Fitzmaurice, G.W.,  Khan, A., Buxton, W., Kurtenbach, G. & Balakrishnan, R. (2003). Sentient Data Access via a Diverse Society of Devices. ACM Queue, 1(8), 53-62.

Boom Chameleon with Dynamic Voice and Ink Annotation
(5 min. 26 sec.)
Alias|Wavefront & Univ. of Toronto
2002
This is a refinement of the previous video, which adds the ability to record, save and share the dynamic view resulting from moving the boom, as well as voice and marking annotations made while doing so.

Ref:
Tsang, M, Fitzmaurice, G., Kurtenbach, G., Khan, A. & Buxton, W. (2002).  Boom Chameleon:  SImultaneous capture of 3D viewpoint, voice and gesture annotations on a spatially-aware display.  Proceedings of the 2002 ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology (UIST'02), 111-120.  Summary  in (2003) ACM Transactions on Graphics (TOG), 22(3), 698.
 

Tracking Menus
(1 min. 20 sec.)
Alias|Wavefront Research
2002
Tracking menus are a new type of menu where the menu is sort of like the tracking symbol for the stylus or mouse.  The "only" difference is that the menu only tracks when the actual mouse tracking cross hits the edge of the menu.  When the tracking cross moves over top of the menu, rather than against the edge, it works like any other menu.  Sounds simple, but it brings a lot of new capability, especially to pen-based systems like the Tablet-PC.

Ref:
Fitzmaurice,  G., Khan, A.,  Pieké, R., Buxton, W. & Kurtenbach, G. (2003). Tracking Menus. Proceedings of the ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology (UIST'03), 71-79.