Make your presentations talk back to you
A VoxProxy example
VoxProxy, created and sold by RightSeat Software is a great way to bring an additional level of interaction to your PPT presentations. Using Microsoft Agent technology and animated avatars, VoxProxy allows you to add characters that interact with you, with each other, and with your presentation.
The characters delivered with VoxProxy include humans, aliens, wizards, robots, birds, even an airplane. (There are 28 in all.) If you want to see the characters, check them out on the Characters page of the VoxProxy site.
This tutorial covers my creation of a very basic script for a four slide presentation. It touches on the highlights of the process of script creation. However, don't judge the abilities of the characters on what I have listed here. They can read, write, do magic, move, speak, and wait. In addition, each of the characters have thier own special actions you have to see to believe.
Getting Started
VoxProxy as delivered contains two CD's: One is the main program CD and the other is a copy of the VoxProxy player. To use the product, install the main program CD onto a machine that has PPT 2000 or later installed. I installed it on a machine with PPT 2003 for the purposes of this article. If you are using it with one of the older versions, your mileage may vary.
Putting the CD in the drive starts off the InstallShield based installation process. After clicking through the inevitable EULA, the installation process is quick, easy, and self driven. At the end of the installation process, you will be shown an introduction to the characters and what they can do via VoxProxy. This is a great way to get to see a selection of the characters available. It also shows how to access VoxProxy from PPT and how to access the tutorials.
Using VoxProxy
To access VoxProxy, open PPT. You will see that a new menu "VoxProxy" has been added. Menu options are:
While the introduction suggests you take a look at the tutorials first, I skipped right into adding a script to an existing presentation. I started with my "No Bullets" presentation. Since it was designed to explain a topic, it seemed like a logical choice. My plan was to add scripted comments instead of the text boxes to explain how to run the bullet-free presentation. I don't recomend you follow my example. Watch the tutorials. I watched a couple of them when I got stuck and found
that they helped immensily. They include great examples of the variety of things you can do with VoxProxy.
The first step in creating a VoxProxy enabled presentation is to select the character you want to use. Start the Script Writer. Read the tip of the day and close the tip box. Do View--> Character Gallery. From the character gallery, pick the character for your show. The default character is Paul. (If you switch between applications, VoxProxy will take that as a selection of Paul. He will sit on the top of all other applications and wait for you to do something with him. Watch him wait. It
is kind of funny.)
I browsed through the characters to see what each would do. While doing that, I got myself caught in a trap. I had Squidge reading, and I changed characters. Hmmm.. Nothing happened. Turns out that if you have a character in the gallery doing an action, you need to click the Close All button to tell VoxProxy that you want to pick a different character.
I ended up choosing Squidge. He wasn't exactly the image I wanted for the presentation, but he did the things I needed done. (Later on in the process of learning VoxProxy, I discovered that there are many more actions for each character than show in the gallery preview.) Once you know which character you want to use, click the insert button. The character setup screen will appear:
As you can see, this lets you set up where you want the character to be placed on your slide, how you want the character to look, and what you want them to do. I left most things at the defaults, with one exception: I turned on the word balloons. Then, I set about making Squidge do what I wanted. The easist way to make characters do what you want is to click the Wizard button. It will allow you to build a series of actions and speeches for your character to follow.
I set up Squidge to show, say a short piece, say a second piece and wait for the mouse click. Once these were set up, I was ready to move to the next slide. To set up Squidge's actions for the next slide, I clicked to return focus to PPT, selected the next slide to script, and then re-selected the script editor to set up the next slide.
Quickly, I realized that Squidge needed someone to talk to to make the presentation work. I added Marge and made her the information person and Squidge the foil.
As I finished a slide, I moved to the next slide in PPT, figured out what I wanted to do and set up the script. I made sure I tested each script as I went along. It took me about 2 hours to get the scripts done for 4 slides. If I had watched the tutorials and read more of the help, it would have gone faster.
Sample Scripts
The following lists are the scripts I created for each of the slides. The format for commands is straight forward: Pick a character and tell them what to do. The commands you will use most frequently are:
- Show - make this character visible
- Say - the words for a character to speak
- Move - change the location of the character, either to a region of the screen or an exact pair of coordinates
- Wait - Possible the most important of the commands, this tells the character to wait for someone else to finish or something to happen
- Hide - make the character go away
Slide 1:
Slide 2:
Slide 3:
Slide 4:
I learned a few things by playing around:
- If you right click in the script for the slide, you get a context sensitive menu that can be used to add commands. It is much faster to do some commands this way. However, I found that I still started with the Wizard and used the right click menu for clean up and expansion of the slide.
- Save frequently. You won't loose data with VoxProxy, but it may seem like you do if your system is slow to respond during slide changes.
- VoxProxy can be very addicting. I can see uses for this all
over the place.
- Getting the timing right can be very hard. I had a problem on my machine that the speech didn't always play. If another character was listening for the speech, the script never moved on. I had to make sure there was an extra action command that could complete run before the speech started. This allowed enough delay for the listening command to be processed before the speech started.
Distribution:
Script completed, I moved on to the next stage. I ran the presentation clear through from start to finish. I immediately noticed that VoxProxy put a small icon in the middle of each screen that had a script. I selected that icon and moved it off the screen. It didn't affect anything in the running and helped the slides look better.
Once my presentation was tested, it was time to get it ready to run on another machine. VoxProxy comes with a second CD that is the player. You can install that player on other machines to run your presentation. There are big warnings not to install the player on a machine with full up VoxProxy installed.
To package up the presentation, return to the script editor. Do Tools--> CD Prep Wizard. This will start of the process of saving your presentation to play on another machine. You can do the save one of two ways: Quick Prep or the long way.
If you are working with a single presentation, and don't want to save any additional information, use Quick Prep. Click the Quick Prep button and you will be prompted for the location of the file and where you want it saved. A folder will be created with the files you need to save to CD. (These files will include the 2003 Viewer.)
I am going to step you through the longer method. It allows a little more customization of the information prepared for the CD. The first step is to run Package for Folder from the PPT menu. This will create a folder containing all your presentation and Viewer files.
Once the Package for Folder is done, bring up the CD Prep intro page. Click the Next button and you will be prompted for the location of your files. This was one of the few steps I had real problems with: Since the VoxProxy windows are "always on top" windows, I had to move the CD Prep window to find the browse window to select the path.
Once you have selected the folder, click Next. You will be told that the folder appears to be PowerPoint Package for CD folder, and asked if you want it reconfigured. Click Yes. From the next screen, set up to do a single presentation and then give the file location for your presentation and click Next.
CD Prep will run through your presentation and tell you how many linked files and VoxProxy scripts were found. When control returns to the wizard, you will be asked to add any other files you want that the wizard didn't find.
Since I didn't have any other files, I clicked Next. The next screen prompts for the characters to be added. The wizard finds the characters referenced in your script and selects the characters you used plus Paul for inclusion on the CD. If you don't need to add more characters, click Next. The next prompt is for language. Again, I only needed the language it found (English), so I just clicked Next.
If you want to be really snazzy with your CD, you can use the next screen to add an HTML page (or pages) that talks about who created the presentation and what its intended use is. Since this was a demo, I didn't add any additional information and left it with just the sample. In general, I expect that I will create and use an information page of my own.
Following this page is a page for author information and copyright information. I filled in both of these, since I wanted to makes sure the presentation was marked as my work. At each stage, you are able to preview the information you are providing.
Once the copyright information is provided, you are now ready to finish the process. The only decision left is whether to always use the Viewer for this presentation, even if the user has full PPT installed. I selected this option - whether you do is up to you. Upon clicking the finish button, you will be prompted for a name for the settings file. VoxProxy will then create the folder with your information. When you are ready to create the CD, copy ALL the contents of the folder, but not the
folder itself to your CD. You are now ready to distribute your presentation.
Conclusion:
VoxProxy is worth the money to get and the time to learn. It helps make your presentations more interactive whether they are being run with a presenter or stand-alone. If you still aren't sure, go to their site and get the trial download. I think you will find yourself using the product enough to justify the purchase.
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