[MUSIC] We use our body in may ways during social interaction, and it can communicate many different things. >> In this video, we'd like to talk about two of the most important ways to use our body to communicate, through gestures and through postures. >> Gestures are movements we make while talking, mostly with our hands, but sometimes with our heads or other body parts. >> Gestures can be meaningful. They can add extra meaning beyond the words we say. For example, some gestures have very definite meanings, like an OK sign, or thumbs up. These are called iconic gestures. >> Iconic gestures can vary a lot between cultures. Nodding and shaking your heads can be yes and no in western cultures, but in India, head shaking gestures mean agreement. My mother is from southern Italy, where there is a very rich vocabulary of gestures. Whether it's complimenting the cook on an excellent meal, or asking for clarification, maybe not in the most polite way. >> When I first came to the UK when I was 22, I have discovered the use of shoulders in expressing certain emotions, something we don't really do in China. Also, I was very used to counting from one to ten with one hand. So this is how I count six, seven, eight, and nine. I was really surprised to discover that this is not the case outside of China. >> Iconic gestures act a lot like words, they have definite meanings that people understand when you make them. >> But gestures can convey information in other ways that might be hard to put into words. >> For example, I might say, I'd like the pink cupcake on the top shelf between the chocolate cake and the lemon tart or I could just point to it. >> Pointing is a very important communicative gesture that we use all the time. >> Some gestures, on the other hand, don't mean anything at all. Most of the gestures I am making while I talk are called beat gestures. They mark the rhythm of my speech, and they can provide emphasis but they don't really mean anything. >> All of the gestures we've been talking about are very closely linked to speech. Sometimes, they can substitute speech, but they mostly accompany and enhance it. The timing and rhythm of gestures is closely synced to that of speech. >> That means if you want characters to do gestures, then we need to create them together with speech. If we're generating speech with a chatbot, then we need an algorithm to dynamically generate gestures to go with it which can be pretty hard. When I talked about speech, I recommended you use prerecorded audio clips. For gesture, you can use prerecorded animations. >> Ideally, you would record audio and motion capture the gestures simultaneously to make sure they're fully synchronized. But that needs equipment that is beyond the reach of most people. Instead, you can get hold of clips of gestures and do your best to make sure they match the speech. >> Gestures and movements and particularly parts of the body normally hands. Posture, on the other hand, is the pose of the whole body when it doesn't move. >> Posture is less of a directly communicative channel, but it can express a lot of things, for example, emotion. We can easily recognize a sad, dejected posture, and distinguish it from a proud posture. >> Light gestures the easiest way to generate posture is to use pre-recorded animations. Maybe selecting different animations to convey different emotions. >> An easier way of combining posture and gesture is to use layers. That means, splitting the body into different parts and applying different animations to each part. For example, gestures applied to the arms and posture animation applied to the torso. >> If you've got to grips with character animation, then posture and gesture are a good place to start using body language because they mostly use the basic techniques. But with them, you can create expressive body language for your social VR character. [MUSIC]
