Help making MS ACS files

Microsoft Agent Character Viewer

Agent Character exit branching

This assumes you have the Microsoft Agent Character Editor and are familar with it BMP or GIF images.

Open the Microsoft Agent Character Editor, open an ACD file or Edit and New Animation. Now click the + Plus sign to open the animations file. If there are no animations do Edit and New Animation so you have one. Click once on your Animation to highlight it. For our sample we want 4 frames. Press the new frame icon until you have 4 frames. Now from the top click on your animation, under the Return Animations dropdown box select Use Exit Branching.
Now with each frame we will be under the Branching tab unless noted

Exit Branching
Ex: 1
Frame 1 check Exit after frame to 4
Frame 2 check Exit after frame to 1
Frame 3 check Exit after frame to 2 and Normal Branching 100% to 4
Frame 4 nothing under branching, under General tab only for this frame set to 0 Duration
To extend the frames in frames 1 and 3 change the 4 to your last frame number. Use frame 2 as an example for extra frames, frame # -1 for the Exit after frame to #.
Now just add your images BMP 256 colors or GIF. Make any adjustments to your Durations Frame 1 to 3. Frame 1 is commonly used for your base frame or your RestPost frame.

Now when you build your character and the animation runs it will reverse the frame order when it completes. Example say it is a MoveRight animation, it will go from frame 1 to 3 then move right. When done moving it will reverse the order back to your normal pose. If this animation was speech capable the mouth Overlays would go in frame 3.

Exit Branching using a different exit animation
Ex:2
To use a different exit animation. We will use 8 frames here. On animation Return Animation dropdown select Use Exit Branching.
Frame 1 to 3 nothing in the branching just your animation.
Frame 4 check Exit after frame to 5 and Normal Branching 100% to 8
Frame 5 to 7 no branching just the frame of the exit sequence
Frame 8 nothing under branching, under General tab only for this frame set to 0 Duration
Here your animation runs 1 to 4 then as in the top example if it were MoveRight it would move until it stops then go from Frame 5 to 7

Exit branching with a looping animation
Using Ex: 1 in Frame 3 change Normal Branching 100% to 3
This will cause the animation to loop Frame 3 and still use the exit branching.

In a Default Character this would be used in Idle3_2 animation where the character commonly falls asleep or goes into some loop.

Jess Sample Image

Agent Character information and software

Microsoft Agent Character Viewer: You can view individual animations of an ACF file Here just click load then select the animations you would like to view.

Make your own character: It can be easy using one picture and mouth overlays. Or fairly time consuming using the about 60 animations in the Default Character. Some of the free characters floating around only have a couple of animations. They use the default character and place the same image in for each animation. There is nothing wrong with this to make an ACS file very quickly. My ACS file Jess will have at least all of the animations when complete and will be available on his page Jess. This makes for a more realistic and exciting character. Even though Jess appears to just be a toon, Jess is so much more. Using CyberBuddy below you can view individual animations amongst other more practical uses.

Microsoft Agent Character Editor: used to compile agent images and sounds into an ACS or ACF file. The ACS file is mainly used in your computer where the ACF file along with it's generated ACA files for each animation. You can find the Editor at the Microsoft Agent web site under Downloads for developers. This is a major resource, also the "Microsoft Agent in the MSDN Library" link at the top of the page is also a resource. You can find the Agent core componets, speech engines, speech recognition, speech control panel and all your software on this site.

For Agent Scripting, as in VBS Scripting on this site Jess's home page. Check out Microsoft Agent Scripting Software (MASS) Mass If you check for System Requirements in their Downloads page, I believe CyberBuddy fullfills all requirements.

This leaves you with no easy way to see and hear your characters. CyberBuddy is a great Free no nags, only hear what you want to hear Utility program. You can read more about it on my Jess ACF file demo page Here for a quick insight into CyberBuddy that you will not find on there site. The CyberBuddy site is however a very good site, the easiest place to get everything except the Agent Editor. Download CyberBuddy, install it and you will be told if you need any other componets easily accessed at CyberBuddy.

To top of page