Animations For Almost All Apps From 7th Level

7th Level, Inc. [NASDAQ:SEVL] said Wednesday it has made a breakthrough that will let users produce and lip synch animated characters that users can play back in all major PC software packages. It is based on the firm’s Agent 7 1.0 Internet animation software and can be used on World Wide Web sites as well as in Microsoft Office and other applications.

The breakthrough was making Agent 7 1.0 compatible with Microsoft’s object linking and embedding (OLE) standard. The result is that the program’s talking characters can be inserted into Windows 95/98 applications, whether networked or standalone. OLE-compatible applications include WordPerfect and "notes" style groupware, not just Microsoft products, the firm notes.

"In a PowerPoint presentation, you can have the character interact with you," 7th Level Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Richard Merrick told Newsbytes. "I did it at a stockholder’s meeting the other day and the audience was captivated. You can have the character pop up, crack jokes, ask questions, whatever you want it to do. It really is effective."

The secret to what 7th Level hopes will become an irresistible appeal lies in the system’s ease of use and its ability to coordinate a character’s animated actions with a recorded, spoken message.

To create the animation, a user inserts an OLE object into the project at hand, for example, a PowerPoint presentation. This launches a "wizard" that lets the user select from a group of pre-cast animated characters.

Once a character is selected, the user reads the message into a microphone and the program saves it as a standard WAV file either for distributed use on a network such as a local area network (LAN) or the Internet, or for local use with the project.

Once the voice message is saved to disk, Agent 7 scans the audio file to pull phonemes from the recording and fit emotive gestures to it. The user can script actions where desired, so the character could look down at an earnings report or lean into the screen with a question for the presenter, for example. And since the animations are OLE linked, they can be changed — a useful capability for publishing calendars or for updating either presentations or Web sites.

Merrick says the firm expects to make Agent 7.0.1 available on its Web site either this week or next. At that time a 14-day evaluation version will be available for free download, or registered for $99, the firm said. The Web site is at http://www.7thlevel.com.