Exocortex Technologies

Submitted

By

Anurag Saxena Roll. No. - 1171913006

Bachelor of Technology in Information Technology

Department of Information TechnologyAxis Institute of Technology And Management

C E R T I F I C A T E

This is to certify that the seminar work entitled “Exocortex Technologies” carried out by

Anurag Saxena, under my guidance bearing Roll.no 1171913006, a student of 3rd year

B.Tech in Information Technology from Axis Institute of TechnologyAnd Management

has been completed by his and worthy of acceptance for the degree of Bachelor of

Technology in Information Technology, under Uttar pradesh Technical University.

Mr. Abhishek Verma Miss. Karnika dixit.GUIDE Seminar In-Charge

Information Technology Information Technology

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

The making of the seminar needed co-operation and guidance of a number of

people. I therefore consider it my prime duty to thank all those who had helped me

through his venture.

I am very grateful, thankful and wish to record my indebtness to the head of the

department of Information Technology Mr. Adesh Chandra, for his active guidance

and interest in this project work.

It is my immense pleasure to express my gratitude to Mr. Abhishek Verma and

Miss. Karnika dixit.

as my guide who provided me constructive and positive feedback during the

preparation of this seminar.

I would also like to take the opportunity to thank of Mr. Naman Gupta, Mr.

Adesh Chandra, Mr. Abhishek Verma and Miss. Karnika dixit.

Lastly, word run to express our gratitude to my Parents and all the Professors,

Lecturers, Technical and Official staffs and friends for their co-operation, constructive

criticism and valuable suggestions during the preparation of seminar report.

Anurag Saxena

ABSTRACT

Exocortex Technologies, in collaboration with CG Artists Chris Covelli and Eric

Thivierge, is pleased to introduce Exocortex Species. Exocortex Species simplifies the

process of human character creation from designing your character’s unique attributes,

integrating sculpting results, to rig creation, even animation. With Species, you will

create higher quality animated characters faster and at a lower cost, while avoiding the

generic look that often come when purchasing off-the-shelf models. Exocortex Species

supports both Autodesk Softimage 2010, 2011 and 2012 on both Windows and Linux.

Floating and node locked licenses are available starting at $299. For full licensing

details, please refer to the Species Purchase Options. The brain child of Chris Covelli,

Exocortex Species has been designed to meet the needs of production animators and

TDs while simplifying the process of character creation. Chris realized that the types of

characters required in production can be viewed as variations of the fundamental human

form. Thus Chris designed a system that starts with a high quality human proportional

rig, either male or female, which is then customized via a simple but powerful

1.Exocortex Technologies : Exocortex Technologies, in collaboration with CG Artists Chris Covelli and Eric Thivierge, is pleased to introduce Exocortex Species. Exocortex Species simplifies the process of human character creation from designing your character’s unique attributes, integrating sculpting results, to rig creation, even animation. With Species, you will create higher quality animated characters faster and at a lower cost, while avoiding the generic look that often come when purchasing off-the-shelf models.

1.1Exocortex SpeciesExocortex Species supports both Autodesk Softimage 2010, 2011 and 2012 on both Windows and Linux. Floating and node locked licenses are available starting at $299. For full licensing details, please refer to the Species Purchase Options.

Simplifying Characters Creation

1.2Brain childThe brain child of Chris Covelli, Exocortex Species has been designed to meet the needs of production animators and TDs while simplifying the process of character creation. Chris realized that the types of characters required in production can be viewed as variations of the fundamental human form. Thus Chris designed a system that starts with a high quality human proportional rig, either male or female, which is then customized via a simple but powerful morphology blender to the unique character proportions required for your production. Eric Thivierge joined the project to apply his Softimage plugin experience to make the best product possible. The resulting unique character form can then be converted, at the push of a button, to a high quality production rig that your animators will love working with.

Save Time, Save Money and Iterate Faster

Exocortex Species is primarily designed as a time saver. Species will save studios and artists days if not weeks of time developing character assets.

In a matter of minutes you can create multiple characters from the same proportional rig and line them up for quick reviews by your designers. Once approved you simply generate the animation rig which takes less than a minute and you’re off and running into layout and shot production.

No longer are your artists required to spend days building a mesh from scratch and the same if not more to build the rig to go along with it.

Less time spent in character development means more time for creativity in animation and thus bears a higher quality product.

fig: Animated image javamanFlexible Body Types avoid that Generic Look

To avoid both the generic cookie cutter look that often comes with using pre-build, off the shelf models and to better meet the needs of your art direction, Species has integrated an innovative body type blending system. Chris and Eric have created more than a dozen classic body types for both the male and female proportional rigs each with its own unique twist including:

Standard BuildOut of Shape / Beer Belly1. Cartoon-Style2. Stocky

3. Skinny4. Obese5. Pro Athletic Muscular6. Exaggerated Muscular7. Midget

If one of our classic body types doesn’t meet your needs, it is possible in Species to blend these classic body types together to create the unique mix your production requires.

These presets are accessible in the custom synoptic (GUI Picker) for the Proportional Rig.

Quality Models to Build UponSpecies includes two high quality human models, one female and one male. These models have been designed by the creators to meet the needs of production. The meshes have been modeled to ensure the topology allows for the best deformations and come complete with quality mapped UVs. For the large majority of projects, these models should be sufficient for modelling humanoids.

Mesh Customization to meet Production NeedsBut if these meshes don’t meet your needs, Species supports a number of convenient work flows for achieving more:

Both of the models and Species rigs are designed such that additional detail can be added to the meshes.Because the meshes already have quality UVs, it is straightforward to import any fine details sculpted in either ZBrush or Mudbox.It is even possible to use Species with user supplied meshes. This provides the flexibility to rig a character that has already been generated by other means, enabling Species to be adopted mid-production if required.To accelerate work flow, Species utilizes the primary synoptic view below (featured in the animation rig section) for navigating the proportional rig controllers. This synoptic is also automatically attached to any custom meshes upon import.

1.3A Professional Grade Rig, Automatically Created

Eric Thivierge, a professional character TD / RnD developer at Hybride Technologies, has created in Species a fast and fully automated conversion system that converts your proportional rig and mesh into an animation rig. Eric’s data driven approach allows for a vast range of different rig configurations to be built on the fly.

The animation rig includes:

Look at control with parent switchingIK / FK arms and legs with stretchGimbal offsets for FK arms and legsFK controls are mirrored so selecting both and rotating provides mirrored posing

fig1.3 Roll divisions along the arms and legs Foot Roll and banking Adjustable roll and banking pivots Re-sizable biceps, forearms, femurs, and shins Hybrid IK / FK spline based spine

Scalable rig via the Offset_M_ConLike the proportional rig, the animation rig comes with a multi-page synoptic allowing your animators to select controls and animate with ease!

The animation rig has been designed with a mixed pipeline in mind. The deformations of the meshes are driven by null (locator) objects and thus allows users to export the mesh along with the deformers to other packages such as Maya or any others that support FBX.

The characters generated through the Species system are portable and do not require additional plug-ins to operate normally. The synoptic can be localized to the current project and can then be packaged with the model file for inter studio transfer or for sending to artists off site.

If the users so chooses, they may generate an armature with no controls from the proportional rig and then add a control system themselves.

User TestimonialsSpecies is only two months old, but already it has found a welcome home in leading Softimage-based studios around the world:

"We're currently using Species on a couple of projects and we have a big job coming up for which we'll be using it extensively. Even now, it's already allowed our artists to jump right in and push their work along. It's a great product and makes me wish I had more characters to model!"

Tim Crowson - Magnetic Dream

"I will definitely be using it in production at Busty Kelp."Paul Smith - Busty Kelp

"I had already started using Species on a live work project during beta, and I'm finding it a simple and productive system to get up and running fast."Gavin Marais - Derivco

"I just wanted to give a thumbs up to the creators of Species. The plug-in is now an important tool in my regular pipeline. Literally saving me days on each character.""Robert Dowling - Pixelpickle Games

1. 4Created by Experts "Exocortex Species has been created by an experienced pair of CG Artists with complimentary " Expert :ER Anurag saxena,Eric Thivierge is a Character TD / RnD developer at Hybride Technologies. Eric’s background includes stints at Animal Logic, The Mill, Psyop, Superfad, and SpeakeasyFX. Eric has a long history of creating plug-ins for the Softimage community including the popular ET_AnimStore, and ET_PassManager plugins.

Chris Covelli is a freelance 3D generalist in New York. Chris began his career as lead creature modeler and animator for The Last Winter, an indie horror film. Chris' recent client’s include Quietman, SpeakeasyFX, Superfad, and Janimation. Exocortex Species evolved from the GrowRig plug-in, Chris’s first foray into plug-in development.

We'd also like to give credit to all of our awesome beta testers for the great feedback which helped us make an amazing plug-in. A special thanks goes out to Mitch Lotierzo for creating the custom Species synoptics.

Training Materials and CommunityIn addition to providing a detailed user manual, we have developed a series of video tutorials, designed and narrated by Chris Covelli and Eric Thivierge, that guide you through various tools within Species:

fig1.4

1.4Exocortex Species& Tutorial Videos

To stay up to date with new releases, learn tricks and tips for getting the most of out Species and chat with fellow users as well Species's creators Chris Covelli and Eric Thivierge join us in the Species Support and Discussion mailing list:

An exocortex is a theoretical artificial external information processing system that would augment a brain's biological high-level cognitive processes.

An individual's exocortex would be composed of external memory modules, processors, IO devices and software systemsthat would interact with, and augment, a person's biological brain. Typically this interaction is described as being conducted through a direct brain-computer interface, making these extensions functionally part of the individual's mind.

Individuals with significant exocortices could be classified as cyborgs or transhumans.

Living Digital provided one description of the concept:

While [the traditional concept of] a cyborg has included artificial mechanical limbs, embedded chips and devices, another interesting concept is the exocortex, which is a brain-computer interface. In theory, the exocortex would be a computer-like processing system that would co-exist with and enhance the power of the human brain. Neuromancer is a book that has talked about such a scenario.

Etymology

The noun exocortex is composed of the Greek-derived prefix exo-, meaning external or outside, and the Latin noun cortex, which originally meant bark but is used in neuroscience for the outer bark-like layer of the brain that is the site of most sophisticated cognitive information processing. It was coined in allusion to the neocortex (literally 'new bark'), the newest part of the mammalian brain (in evolutionary history), believed to be responsible for the highest human cognitive abilities including conscious thought, spatial reasoning, and sensory perception. Thus the terminology suggests a progression from

reptilian thought (the older parts of the brain) through human (neocortex) to high-level human or even supra-human cognitive processing capabilities (exocortex).

Specific applications

In 1981 Steve Mann designed and built the first general purpose wearable computer. Later on he became one of the early pioneers in using wearable computers for augmented and computer-mediated reality. Although he does not refer to it as such, his personal wearable computer could be considered an exocortex. Running applications like the remembrance agent[2] on his wearable computer enhances his natural mental capabilities

Intellectual background

The concept of an exocortex has intellectual roots both in the fields of computer science and evolutionary psychology.

Computer science roots

Within computer science, the seeds were planted by the DARPA associated researcher J.C.R. Licklider. Within his speculative 1960 paper Man-Computer Symbiosis, Licklider outlined his vision that humans and the new technology of computers, if tightly-coupled together, would prove to complement each other's strengths to such a degree that many of the pure artificial intelligence systems envisioned at the time by optimistic researchers would prove unnecessary:

Man-computer symbiosis is a subclass of man-machine systems. There are many man-machine systems. At present, however, there are no man-computer symbioses. The purposes of this paper are to present the concept and, hopefully, to foster the development of man-computer symbiosis by analyzing some problems of interaction between men and computing machines, calling attention to applicable principles of man-machine engineering, and pointing out a few questions to which research answers are needed. The hope is that, in not too many years, human brains and computing machines will be coupled together very tightly, and that the resulting partnership will think as no human brain has ever thought and process data in a way not approached by the information-handling machines we know today.

—Man-Computer Symbiosis, J.C.R. Licklider, March 1960.

A DARPA contemporary of Licklider, Douglas Engelbart, was thinking along similar lines in the field of computer science. In 1962, Engelbart authored Augmenting Human Intellect in which he details how to augment human intellectual effectiveness by exploiting the technology of the then emerging computer:

This is an initial summary report of a project taking a new and systematic approach to improving the intellectual effectiveness of the individual human being. A detailed conceptual framework explores the nature of the system composed of the individual and the tools, concepts, and methods that match his basic capabilities to his problems. One of the tools that shows the greatest immediate promise is the computer, when it can be harnessed for direct on-line assistance, integrated with new concepts and methods.

—Augmenting Human Intellect: A Conceptual Framework, Douglas

Engelbart, October 1962.

From this basis, the concept of an exocortex, the direct coupling of the human mind with computers to leverage their respective complementary strengths, can be viewed as a result of the ever increasing symbiotic coupling between human and computers.

Psychology roots

The exocortex concept also has roots in evolutionary psychology as a result of Merlin Donald of Queen's University. Donald, in the 1990 book Origins of the Modern Mind as well as later papers, proposed an evolutionary model of the mind, from a functionary perspective, from its origins in prehistoric apes to the modern human being. Donald focuses significant attention on the use that modern humans make of external symbolic storage and manipulation systems—the range of technologies from cuneiforms, hieroglyphics, and ideograms to alphabetic languages, mathematics and now computers. From Donald's perspective, these external symbolic systems have allowed for the functional reorganization of the human mind in how it deals with the world.

The externalization of memory [via the use of external symbolic storage systems] has altered the actual memory architecture within which humans think, which is changing the role of biological memory, the way in which the human brain deploys its resources, and the form of modern culture.

—Precis of Origins of the modern mind, Merlin Donald, 1996.

Thus to Donald, the human mind has long been a hybrid structure built from the vestiges of earlier biological stages and combined with our new external symbolic systems. The development of an exocortex, which could result in significant functional reallocation, again fits well within this long established trend.

Current applicability

Cognitive science origin

In November 1998 the specific term exocortex was coined by researcher Ben Houston. Houston coined the term to refer concisely to tightly-coupled cognition-level brain-computer interface technologies in the spirit of Licklider's and Engelbart's original visions.

exocortex (eks'o kor'teks) n. Latin -- an organ that resides outside of the brain that aids in high level thinking. .... This will not be a prominent term until prefrontal cortex neural implants become widespread. (emphasis in original)

—early exocortex definition, Ben Houston, May 2000 [1].

Use in science fiction

Speculative devices which fit the definition of exocortices were described in hard science fiction long before the term was coined; examples appear in Neuromancer by William Gibson and in The Peace War by Vernor Vinge, both published in 1984. More recently Vinge, in A Fire Upon the Deep and several short stories, described the functional effects of what are essentially several kinds of exocortices - both those composed of computational elements, and those enabled by high-bandwidth communication between groups of beings. Peter F. Hamilton's Night's Dawn trilogy also describes in detail similar technological beings.

Charles Stross, the Hugo Award-nominated hard science fiction writer, has led the adoption of the term exocortex within science fiction circles. Beginning in 2004, Stross made use of the term in Elector, a short story published in the September issue of Asimov's Science Fiction. Stross made more extensive uses of the term exocortex and its derivatives in Accelerando, his 2005 novel.

While Stross himself does not provide an explicit definition of the term, a few passages indicate his meaning:

About ten billion humans are alive in the solar system, each mind surrounded by an exocortex of distributed agents, threads of personality spun right out of their heads to run on the clouds of utility fog – infinitely flexible computing resources as thin as aerogel – in which they live. (emphasis added)

—Accelerando, Charles Stross, 2005.

Sometimes he isn't certain he's still human; too many threads of his consciousness seem to live outside his head, reporting back whenever they find something interesting. .... And it's too early for anyone out there to be trying to hack exocortices... isn't it? Right now, the external threads of his consciousness are telling him that they like Annette.... (emphasis added)

—Accelerando, Charles Stross, 2005.

The Wikibooks Accelerando Technical Companion provides this explanation:

An EXOcortex can best be described as the portion of a trans- or posthuman entity's brain (or cortex) which exists outside of that entity's primary computing structure, usually the brain inhabiting a person's 'meatbody.' For

example, a person's exocortex could very well be composed of all the external memory modules, processor, and devices that the person's biological brain interacts with on a realtime basis, thereby in effect making those external devices a functional part of the individual's 'mind.' (emphasis in original)

—Accelerando Technical Companion, Wikibooks.

Popular usage

While initial recognition of the exocortex concept was nonexistent, this has changed as a result of Charles Stross's recent publications and the growing awareness of brain-computer interfacing. The term and concept of an exocortex has both been applied (i.e. "Suffered a Stroke in my Exocortex") and noted as a novel interesting word (i.e. "Found Words: Exocortex") by various bloggers. Here are some additional examples of proper contextual usage: [2], and [3]. The concept has been described in the March 2006 issue of Living Digital. James Hughen wrote in an essay entitled "What comes after humans?" that appeared in the Nov 16, 2006 issue of the New Scientist:

To remain the web’s weavers and not its ensnared victims, we must merge with our electronic exocortex, wiring greater memory, thought processing and communication abilities directly into our brains.

Future prospects

If one widens the definition of an exocortex, one can see that computational elements are already used as supporting elements of biological brains, and growing dependence on parts of the Internet that serve cognitive functions has brought what could be considered a proto-exocortex into existence. Wikipedia itself is an example, as technological interfaces enable inter-brain co-operation on high-level cognitive tasks. The fulfillment of the initial vision of Licklider and Engelbart suggests that continued development along this path is likely.

Currently, true exocortices remain speculative. The main issue is that the required underlying technology is yet to be produced by the scientific research fields of (1) cognitive neuroscience, (2) computational neuroscience and (3) neural engineering.

See also

• Brain

• Brain-computer interface• Cerebral cortex• Cognition• Consciousness• Hypermedia• List of emerging technologies

• Memex• Mind• Neocortex• Project Xanadu

References

1. Jump

up^ http://livingdigitalindia.ciol.com/content/Feature/2006/106032004.asp[dead link]

2. Jump up ^ http://www.remem.org/