Introduction to Alice
Michelle Venable-Foster
June 2006
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What is Alice?
• Alice (software), is a freeware
introductory object-oriented programming
software produced by Carnegie-Mellon, an
educational programming language. Alice
uses a drag and drop environment to
create computer animations.
• It is named after Lewis Carroll’s Alice
in Wonderland!
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What is Alice?
• You can create animations using 3-D
models that can move around a virtual
world!
• The latest version of Alice can be
downloaded for free at: www.alice.org
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What Kinds Of Movies
Can We Make?
• There are two types of animations that we
can make:
– Movie – the user just watches the animation.
This is called passive.
– Interactive – the user types on the keyboard
or uses the mouse to make events
happen.
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What’s Coming?
• EA has agreed to help underwrite the
development of Alice 3.0 – a popular,
object-oriented, Java-based computerprogramming environment created by
Carnegie Mellon researchers – and
provide essential arts assets from “The
Sims™” – the best selling PC video
game of all time.
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Compare Current Alice
With Sims Alice!
Current version of Alice
New version of Alice!
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Let’s Get Started!
• You should first locate the Alice folder on
your computer and double-click the Alice
icon that looks like this:
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Let’s Get Started!
• You will see the Welcome to Alice! dialog
box -
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A Little Techno-speak!
• The Welcome to Alice! dialog box is in
front of the Alice Integrated Development
Environment (IDE).
• An IDE is a computer program that is used
to write other computer programs.
• The Alice IDE is sometimes called
the Alice interface.
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Let’s Look At Some Examples!
• Click on the Examples tab at the top of
your Welcome to Alice! dialog box.
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Let’s Look at Some Examples!
• Spend the next few minutes viewing the examples in Alice. Click on
the animation you want to view, and click on the Open button.
• When the world opens up, click on the Play button:
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Let’s Look At The Tabs
• The Welcome to
Alice! dialog box has
five tabs: Tutorial,
Recent Worlds,
Templates, Examples,
and Open a world.
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The Tutorial Tab
• Click on the Tutorial tab.
• You will see 4 tutorials. We won’t be doing these
now, but, you can come back to them during any
“free time” we have, or at home.
• When you are ready to view a
tutorial, you can either click on the
Start the Tutorial button or directly on
one of the tutorial screenshots.
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The Recent Worlds Tab
• Click on the Recent Worlds tab. You will
see screenshots of the most recently
saved Alice worlds.
• If no worlds have been saved since Alice
was installed on your computer, this
tab will say no recent worlds.
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The Templates Tab
• Click on the
Templates tab. You
will see 6 blank
templates for starting
a virtual world – dirt,
grass, sand, snow,
space, and water.
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The Open a world Tab
• We’ve already looked
at the Examples tab,
so let’s click on the
Open a world tab.
• This is the tab you will
use to access other
worlds saved to your
computer.
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Let’s Make A Movie!
• Let’s jump right in and
start making our own
animation!
• You can get back to the
original screen by
choosing File > New
World.
• If you’re asked to save
the world you were
viewing, just say no.
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Choose Your Background!
• Just to get us started, choose one of the
templates for your virtual world. Doubleclick the background you want to play with.
• It’s not really important which one you
choose now; this is just to get your feet
wet!
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Let’s Add Some Objects
To Our World
• For right now, think of an object as
anything that can do something!
• Click on the Add Objects button –
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Let’s Add Some Objects
To Our World
• You will see a Gallery of objects that you
can add to your world. Make sure to scroll
to the right to see all of the available
galleries.
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Let’s Add Some Objects
To Our World
• Select a category and look at the different
objects that you can add.
• You can get back to the main level by clicking on
Local Gallery.
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Create Your Own Person!
• If you choose the People category in the
Local Gallery and scroll all the way to the
right, there are two icons called hebuilder
and shebuilder.
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Create Your Own Person!
• If you choose either one of
these, you will bring up the
Person Builder dialog screen.
• You can “create” your own
person using your mouse and
the choices for each body part
and clothing item available!
• When you’re done, make sure
to give your person a name
and type your own name next
to the box that says, Created
By.
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Adding Objects To Our World
• Once you’ve chosen which object you’d
like to add to your world, select it by
clicking on it and then clicking the button
that says, “Add instance to world”.
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More Techno-speak
• We are going to be created our animations
using an object-oriented program, so we
need to discuss what that means!
• We are going to discuss what a class, an
object, and methods are.
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Techno-speak
• A class describes what an object of a particular
type is made of, what is knows about itself and
what it can do.
• A class is merely a description. It is like a plan
for a house. Before you build a house, you
should have a plan. Once you have a plan,
however, you can build any number of similar
houses.
• Some examples of classes are
Houses, Students, MP3 Players, etc.
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Examples of Classes
• Dog – it knows its name, size, breed
it can bark, eat, sleep
• Song – it knows its title and its artist
it can play
• Cat – it knows its name, size, breed
it can meow, sleep, purr
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All About Objects
• What an object “knows” about itself is its
instance variables or properties. Each
instance (copy of the object) has its own
instance variables.
• What an object “can do” is its methods.
• What instance variables and methods
might a Television have?
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Back To Alice!
• If you click on the (+)
sign next to the name
of the object that
you’ve added to the
world, you will see all
of the parts that your
object is made of:
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3 Dimensions, 6 Directions
• Each object has height, length, and depth
• It also has 6 directions in which it can
move:
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Modify Your Object
• You can modify the instance of your object by using
these tools:
• Using these tools you can, Move Objects Freely, Move
Objects Up and Down, Move Objects Left and Down,
Move Objects Forwards and Backwards, Tumble
Objects, Resize Objects, and Copy Objects – just by
using your mouse.
• Spend the next few minutes experimenting with these
tools.
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Modify Your Object
• You can undo or redo your last moves by
clicking on the appropriate buttons:
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Deleting An Object
Right-click on the object and choose delete. Watch
the object spin away!
(click on picture to see movie!)
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Posing Your Object
You can move just one
part of your object by
either clicking the box
next to affect subparts,
and moving it with
your mouse, or by
choosing the
part you want to move
in the Object Tree.
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Let’s Make Our Object Move!
• The first thing you need to do is make sure
that you have an object in your world!
• Click on the big
button. This will return
you to the standard Alice interface.
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Let’s Make Our Object Move!
• To make objects move in your world, you need
to use methods for the objects.
• Every method has two parts: the name of the
object associated with the method (which comes
before the period) and the name of the method
itself (which comes after the period.)
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Let’s Make Our Object Move!
• Click on the name of the object in the
Object Tree you’d like to move:
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Let’s Make Our Object Move!
• Make sure that you click on the Methods
tab in the Details section.
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Let’s Make Our Object Move!
• Find a method you want to use and drag it out to
the middle of world.my first method in the Editor
area.
• A short menu may ask you for more information,
such as, direction or amount you want to move.
• Information that you must give to a method
whenever you use that method is called a
method parameter.
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Play The Movie!
• I know we haven’t done too much so far, but,
let’s test our animation by playing the movie.
• Click the Play button near the upper-left corner
of the Alice interface. Cool, huh?
• Click the Restart button to play the world again,
and then click Stop to return to the Alice
interface.
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Advanced Coding Techniques
• You can group methods by using the commands
at the bottom of the Editor area.
• Do in order – will run the code one after the
other
• Do together – will run the code at the same
time.
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Moving Code
• You can move lines of code by dragging
the dotted left-hand corner of the block.
• The move that you’re attempting is “legal”
if you see a green bar!
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Deleting Code
•
You can delete lines of code in two
different ways:
1. You can drag the line of code into the
trashcan icon.
2. You can right-click on the line of code that
you want to delete, and select delete.
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Let’s Make Our Object Move!
• For the next few minutes, I want you to
experiment with Alice by using the
methods available for the object in your
world.
• When you get something cool, please let
me see it!
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Posing An Object
• You can “pose” an object by right-clicking
the object in the Object Tree and selecting
Methods and choosing the pose you’d like!
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Quad Views
• In the Object Editor screen, you can
choose Quad View, which will give you 4
different views of your object at the same
time!
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Quad View
•
You can click and drag on either of the views to see what you object
looks like at all 4 views! You can also Zoom and Move the view.
(click on the picture to see a movie)
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Camera Controls
• The curved arrow on
the right is the
camera’s tilt control.
It is used to tilt the
camera up or down,
similarly to the way
that you might tilt your
head up or down.
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Camera Controls
•
•
•
•
The center control is a mixed control,
to zoom and pan the camera. A
camera can zoom in and zoom out,
and pan left and pan right.
Zooming in means the camera is
moved in closer to get a tighter shot of
something. Zooming out means the
camera is moved out farther to get a
longer shot of something, so that it
becomes smaller on the screen.
Panning means to turn the camera left
or right without moving the position of
the camera, although it is possible that
you could pan and move at the same
time.
In Alice, you can pan and zoom at the
same time.
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Camera Controls
• The left set of arrows at
the bottom of the world
window is the move
control, which provides
controls to move the
camera left and right, and
up and down, while the
vertical arrows in the
center set move the
camera forward and
backward.
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Adding Sounds!
• Most of the objects in Alice have the ability
to play a sound!
• Locate the method that says
object.playSound
• You can either play one of the sounds in
the Alice library or import one of your own!
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Importing Sounds!
• Using the drop-down menu, select Import
Sound.
• Navigate to the sound file on your
computer that you’d like to use.
• You can only use .wav or .mp3 audio files
in Alice animations.
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Recording Sounds!
• You can record your own sounds to use in Alice by
selecting record new sound in the drop-down menu.
• Give your sound file a name, so you will be able to find it
later.
• When you’re ready, press the record button and speak
into the microphone!
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Create An Animation!
• For the rest of the afternoon, you are to create
your very first original animation in Alice.
• Try to either tell a story, entertain your audience,
or create an interactive movie.
• Remember to be appropriate and spell your
words correctly!
• Save your animation as Lastname_Alice1.
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