Understanding the Alice Virtual World

Unit I: Introduction: Installation and Alice Navigation

Read the lesson on Understanding the Alice Virtual World

In this lesson, you will gain a deeper understanding of objects in the Alice virtual world.

In this chapter, you will learn how objects view and move within the Alice virtual world. You will explore how an object’s position, orientation, and sense of direction affect the way it moves. You will learn how to use actions such as move, turn, and roll to control the objects that make up a scene. Through these activities, you will develop a deeper understanding of how 3D objects behave and how their movements can be controlled to create effective animations.

Objectives:

• Understand the basic principles of object motion and rotation;
• How Objects see the Virtual World: Video demonstrates move, turn and roll;
• Understand that each object has a sense of direction;
• Be able to add code to move, turn and roll;
• Use a sequence of actions to create a dance routine, or other complex action.

Please study the material at each of the links below.

1. Movement in Alice: Video demonstrates the basic principles of object motion and rotation
2. How Objects see the Virtual World: Video demonstrates move, turn and roll
3. Directions: Each object has a sense of direction: forward, backward, left, right, up, backward, and down.
4. Dolphin tricks: Moves, Turn and Roll: A dolphin moves up, down, left and right
5. A Dancing Chicken using move, turn and roll: How to add move, turn and roll procedures to the code
6. Using Functions: Shows the difference between procedures and functions.
7. Eagle flies around the mesa: Eagle flies places using place and spatial relations.
8. Rabbit Falls in Pond using Functions: Uses the functions getDistanceTo and getHeight.
9. Self-Study Questions: What have you learned?
10. Discussion questions: What do you think?

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