Adding New Images from the Gallery

[ElderZ]

I've downloaded these new images from the gallery that apparently were not present in the original version of Alice 2.0(?) Anyway, I'm simply trying to use the new images but I have no knowledge of where to put the files themselves so that Alice will see them. Where do I unzip them to? And is there anything I need to do once I've unzipped them? :confused:

[thetrippster]

This is how to add objects into alice.

its pretty easy. just find the download and go to
1.alice folder
2.required
3.gallery
4.then pic wat gallery u want them in.
5.then restart alice and they should be in there.:D

To import a picture into alice.
1.go to properties
2.import pic

at least i think thats how

[Shadow Sovereign]

You said you downloaded alice from the main page? That version doesn't have as much content as the discs do, trust me, I know. I've tried downloading some objects off the site, but they somehow weren't recognized in the gallery, and I was sure that it was the right directory.
However, we have the discs at our school, and I've been thinking of just copying the gallery onto my Flash Drive and just bringing them home with me. (It'd be a lot easier too... my teacher assigns WAY too much of the exercises at any one time! :eek: )
Anyways, I'm probably not helping... just go into Alice, check the Web Gallery under Add New Objects, and it should show all the things you can download onto your PC.

Hope it works for you! :D

[thetrippster]

umm if u are using the downloaded version of alice. simply go to ur gallery in alice and instead of local choose online gallery. it should bring up all objects that can be downloaded. if nothing shows up then most likely ur school is blocking the online gallery(thats how it is here at my school) but see my directions above if u wish to add objects that u have downloaded from the site.

[Shadow Sovereign]

....Tripp, your spelling is atrocious... :rolleyes:

[thetrippster]

i have to go now. my visual basic class is over for today. if i have found a solution by tommrow i will surely post it.

[DrJim]

Sorry this is short but don't have much time - these notes might save you some effort. Note neither is always true - but I haven't figured out the exceptions. :confused:

Alice does not generally support integers, even in "number to string" conversions for 3D text. This was a deliberate decision made based on their studies of different ages of students - see some of the references on their main web page.

To download from the web gallery, I usually have to load the object into a specific open world, then save from there to a temporary file and later move it into the gallery in the Alice directory. Think it has something to do with the formatting of the .a2c file but haven't figured out exactly what.

[ElderZ]

So once I've downloaded the zip file that has the (new images) from the Alice website .... do I put those zip files into their respective Gallery sub-folders in my Alice Folder? In other words, I don't unzip anything....I simply put the downloaded file into their topical folder (ie. animals, people, etc.) and the program, Alice will know what to do with the zip file??? Yes???:confused:

Trust me, I'm not trying to make this hard.... I'm just trying to understand the procedure.

[DrJim]

Will start with a simple answer - for downloading from the web, Alice seems to do a good job of reading from the web gallery. What I do is just start a new world, access the web gallery (with dial-up this can be slow) and (1) add a copy of the object you want to the world and (2) save it to local disk. This will give you a local .a2c file for the object - then just move it (don’t modify it or unzip it) to the Gallery folder in the Required section of the Alice folder and, when you run Alice, it should then be listed in the Gallery like any other object.

If you want to just import the.a2c file into Alice from where you stored it, you again don't need to do anything special. Alice will take care of decompressing the file and will then use the data. Where I occasionally have trouble is in downloading the file directly and not going through Alice for that step.

Some comments: I really don't think you're making it hard - Alice .a2c files don't seem to be too consistent, probably due differences in the contained data. I suspect some of it was stored using a UNIX or other compression scheme (.tar, .gz and the like). It would be nice to see a full specification for the .a2c format - the files are definitely more than just "zipped" text data - but so far I haven't found one. (Anyone have a reference :confused: - I'd particularly like to be able to reconstruct the mesh files? )

I would be careful about calling an .a2c file a “zip“ file. For a "typical" .a2c file, the very top level contents have been "zipped" in a format that can be treated in XP as a standard .zip file, i.e., you can move stuff, such as thumbnails, in and out of the folder as if it wasn't compressed (assuming you've changed the file extension to .zip). If you actually use XP to "unzip" the top level file, however, the resulting data (nearly) always is not all readable. Won't go into detail here - since I don't understand a lot of it myself :rolleyes: - but if you get a bad file, it's very hard to figure out what's wrong.

[Shadow Sovereign]

If you actually use XP to "unzip" the top level file, however, the resulting data (nearly) always is not all readable. Won't go into detail here - since I don't understand a lot of it myself :rolleyes: - but if you get a bad file, it's very hard to figure out what's wrong.

It sounds like Data Corruption (why did I even capitalize this? :confused: ). I didn't know that Alice could read from zipped folders. Must be a computer thing... :rolleyes:

Anyways, back to the data corruption thingy, if one were to unzip the top level file, then I think (notice the think part!) the problem would be that the remaining files, since they're used to interacting with the top-level file (which from this point on, I will name 'Bob')... anyways, they're so used to interacting with Bob that if he isn't there, they will begin to wonder where he's gone and start checking the whole house for him. The files will check in the kitchen, the bedrooms, bathrooms, backyard, the garage (which is bob's favorite room!;) ), the driveway, and many other places in the house (which is a metaphorical instance that represents the zipped folder), but they don't think of checking OUTSIDE the house (which Bob has done, since he ran out of beer and went to Food Lion to get another 12-pack:rolleyes: )... zipped folders and files looking for missing Bobs do almost the exact same thing.

...................That made absolutely no sense at all, did it? :eek: :confused: :o :D

[DrJim]

Think you must have gotten lost temporarily in the Doge Ambient looking for Bob. :rolleyes:

For you and anyone else that got lost in my "comments" - just ignore them. They can be summarized quickly - the data files for Alice objects (and worlds) are either compressed (think .jpeg vs. .bmp file size differences) or in some cases strictly binary files that execute directly. Unless you know which is which - and use the files appropriately - they're pretty useless. The program that understands them the best is Alice - so the safest path is going through Alice! :)

[Shadow Sovereign]

Go Bob! :D

[ElderZ]

:( Dr. Jim, you said.....

Will start with a simple answer - for downloading from the web, Alice seems to do a good job of reading from the web gallery. What I do is just start a new world, access the web gallery (with dial-up this can be slow) and (1) add a copy of the object you want to the world and (2) save it to local disk. This will give you a local .a2c file for the object - then just move it (don’t modify it or unzip it) to the Gallery folder in the Required section of the Alice folder and, when you run Alice, it should then be listed in the Gallery like any other object.

Where you say "This will give you a local .a2c file for the object -" Okay,
I added a copy of the object from the web gallery that I wanted in my world and I saved the world to my local disk. Now,....where physically, is this local .a2c file that has the new image of the character or characters that I wanted to add?

Dr. Jim, you also said...
If you want to just import the.a2c file into Alice from where you stored it, you again don't need to do anything special. Alice will take care of decompressing the file and will then use the data. Where I occasionally have trouble is in downloading the file directly and not going through Alice for that step.
Okay, I have downloaded several of the new objects on a faster machine because I have dial-up at home (very slow), so I have all these * zip files * on a CD.
How do I let Alice know where they are? How do I give Alice access to them? Where do I physically put these files that I have on my Cd? I've tried putting them directly into C:\alice\required\gallery\{specific topic folder} and that didn't work. I've tried opening Alice hoping that ALICE could find them on the CD but Alice didn't like that either. So, I'm still looking for a way to do this...:( :confused:

[gabe]

.a2c (Alice object) files are basically .zip files. They are compressed containers that hold the data that Alice will read in as a 3D object. It is possible your browser misinterprets the a2c files as zip. Therefore, you will need to manually rename the files to have an extension of a2c.

chicken.zip becomes chicken.a2c

etc.

Try doing this to one file and move it into the \required\gallery and see if it shows up.

[ElderZ]

Thank You, Thank You, Gabe.

That worked!!:D :)

[DrJim]

Sounds like you've already worked this out :) - but in answer to your first question - the file will be wherever you saved it. The window that opens up for the object save is just the normal Windows file window.