Alice Tutorial: Overview and Concepts

Wayne SummersColumbus State U.11/17/06

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What is Alice?

• It’s not an acronym• A fun way to learn programming• You “direct” a “movie” in Alice• 3-D graphical environment similar to

gaming environments• You create animations by moving

objects in a world

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Alice concepts

• Virtual world begins with a template• Template is the initial scene• You can add “objects” to your world• Lots of 3-D models provided in

“galleries” (local or web-based)• Example: snowman object

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Object concepts

• An object has 3 dimensions…1) Height (vertical, top-to-bottom)

2) Width (horizontal, left-to-right)

3) Depth (front-to-back)

• … and 6 directions to move in1) Up 3) Left 5)

Forward

2) Down 4) Right 6) Backward

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Object concepts (cont’d)

• 6 directions of movement are called• 6 degrees of freedom or orientation• From the object’s perspective

• Center of an object• Provides a reference for spin motions• Typically the center of mass

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More object concepts

• Distance between objects is• Measured from center to center

• Position of an object in the world is• Its center• Center of the ground is the center of the

(virtual) world in Alice

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Getting Started

• Open the “Alice” folder• Double-click “Alice” to start the program• You will see the Welcome to Alice! dialog box

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Tutorials

• Run the Skater tutorial• Other tutorials

• Bunny – create methods• Penguins – events• Space – create scenes

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snowLove Exercise

• Select the Examples tab and then select the snowLove example and click Open

• If you don’t see the Examples tab, then cancel out of the window and…

• Select the File menu and then choose Open World

• After the example loads, click the Play button to run the animation

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snowLove Exercise (cont’d)

• Observe the objects and their movements

• What do the buttons do?• After the animation stops, close the

window and observe…• The windows on the screen• The “Add Objects” button• All the objects in the world

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lakeSkater Exercise

• Play the lakeSkater world and observe all the details that you did in snowLove Exercise

• What makes this world more interesting than snowLove?

• Is this more difficult to create than snowLove? Why or why not?

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Snowman Exercise (1/5)

• Click on File and choose New World• Select the snow template as the initial scene• Click on Add Objects and choose People

from Local Gallery• Choose the Snowman (Class Snowman)

and click on “Add instance to world”• Notice how Alice positions the snowman in

the center of the snow in the world

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Snowman Exercise(2/5)

• Save your world• What extension does Alice give its

worlds?• Click on the snowman object and drag

it around on the screen until you like its position in your world

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Snowman Exercise (3/5)

• One at a time, select each of the buttons on the mouse control toolkit on right top corner and experiment with the snowman

• Do you find it difficult or easy to use the buttons? Which button is the easiest to use? Why? Which one is the most difficult to use? Why?

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Snowman Exercise (4/5)

• Check the “affect subparts” box and then play with each of the buttons to control the snowman’s hat

• Uncheck the “affect subparts” box• At any time, you can undo your

actions by clicking the “Undo” button (next to “Play” – left top corner)

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Snowman Exercise (5/5)

• Once you have resized the snowman and moved him (and his hat) the way you want, save the changes to your world again

• Now play with the camera controls – the 3 arrow tools directly beneath your snowman in your world

• Which control is the easiest? Why?

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Tea Party Exercise

• Create a Tea Party scene with AliceLiddell, the whiteRabbit, a table, three chairs, a teapot, toaster and plate.

• Use method instructions, the mouse, and quad view to properly position objects on the table.

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What you can do next

• Do the exercises in one of the texts • Go to alice.org and search for more 3-D

models in the Web gallery• Try to do the more “challenging”

exercises

• Work in pairs or teams and have fun!

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Resources

• http://www.alice.org/• Demonstration videos

• Learning to Program with Alice• A 1-page handout giving a brief overview of Alice

• A video (75MB .WMV) describing Alice -- from 2003 • Summer Camps for Middle School Students

• Textbook info