• Introduction
• Quick start for audience
• Quick start for players
• UpStage
• About the project
• Team
• Get Involved
• Technical information
• About this manual
• Audience
• The role of the Audience
• Join a live cyberformance
• Chat
• Player
• Becoming a player
• Manage your Profile
• Backstage
• Create your own Stage
• Manage your Stage
• Customise your Stage
• Manage your Stage: Media
• Manage your Stage: Chat and Replays
• Manage your Stage : Scenes
• Enter your Stage
• How does the audience see your stage?
• Invite audience
• Media management
• Media in UpStage
• The Studio
• Creating Graphics for UpStage
• Creating Audio for UpStage
• Upload Media
• Modify Media
• Assign Media to your Stage
• Delete Media
• Player : Live Stage
• Enter a live Stage
• Quick overview of tools
• Who is here?
• Chat with the Audience
• Player Chat
• Player: Live Stage Tools
• Audio tool
• Backdrop tool
• Avatar tool
• Avatar Speech and Voices
• Avatar Animation
• Props tool
• Stream tool
• Live Drawing tool
• Object Drawing tool
• Text tool
• Depth tool
• Curtain
• Scenes
• Stage Settings
• Clickable links on stage
• Streaming
• Introduction to streaming
• Sending a stream
• Assign a stream to a stage
• Recording and Statistics
• Statistics
• Chat logs
• Replays
• Screen Recordings
• Admin
• UpStage administration
• Customise your Foyer
• Appendices
• Glossary
• Troubleshooting

Avatar tool

An avatar is an image that can appear on the stage as a character - a kind of digital puppet. It can be moved, rotated, scaled in size, and faded in and out. Avatars can speak with a computeried voice and in speech bubbles as well as in the chat window. The Avatar tool is the third one down and looks like a face.

Place an avatar on the stage

From the left-hand menu, select the Avatar tool. An overlay will appear at the top of the Stage showing thumbnails of the avatars that are assigned to this Stage. Unlike virtual worlds, games and other platforms where each player has their own avatar, in UpStage all of the avatars assigned to a stage are available to all of the players on that stage; and one avatar can be placed on the stage multiple times.

Drag the avatar you want to operate onto the stage. It first appears in black and white, and the live action (light bulb) icon at the top right of the avatar is white. This means that only you can see the avatar.

Click on the light bulb: it becomes green and your avatar becomes colored. This means everyone can now see it. You can adjust the size, position, opacity and frame of the avatar before making it visible to the audience.

Note: If there are many avatars the tool bar a scroll bar will enable you to scroll along or hold down shift.

Holding an avatar

To "hold" an avatar means that you are controlling that avatar, and no other player can operate it until you release it. When you place an avatar on the stage by dragging it from the Avatar tool overlay, you will be holding it by default. To hold an avatar that is already on the stage, double-click on it.

A red pointer icon above the avatar indicates that you are holding it; you will also see a slider on the left, and the lightbulb and X (remove) icon on the right.

A gray pointer icon is shown over avatars held by other players. The audience does not see these icons.

You must be holding an avatar to be able to operate it. Actions include; making it speak, moving, resizing, bring it in front of or behind other media on the stage. You can rotate your avatar, flip it horizontally and vertically,  change its opacity and speed of movement. If the avatar has a layers icon on the lower right it means it has multiple frames which you can select imndividually and animate, also you can adjust the speed of the animation. You can leave it where it is by selecting another avatar or release it to remain on stage without having to switch to another avatar. Finally you can remove it altogether.

A player can only hold one avatar at a time, and an avatar can only be held by one player at a time.

Using the lightbulb

The lightbulb icon allows you to make changes to your avatar without the audience noticing. This allows you to do things such as fade out an avatar at the same time as it moves to another position and gets smaller, so that it appears to be receding into the distance.

Click on the lightbulb so that it turns white, and your avatar is black and white. The audience sees the avatar as it was before you clicked the lightbulb off.

Make the adjustments that you want, to the point that you want the avatar to finish at (for example, small and transparent).

Click the lightbulb so that it is green again. The audience will now see the avatar change to the new position and settings, for example moving away, getting smaller and fading out.

Note: turning off the lightbulb does NOT make your avatar invisible; it means that the audience do not see what you are doing until you turn the lightbulb on again.

Basic avatar operations

When you click on the avatar that you are holding, a green frame appears around the avatar.

Move an avatar

To move the avatar that you are holding to another area of the stage, click and drag it to the new location. A shadow of the avatar will show you where it will end up. When you release the click, the avatar will glide to the new position.

To adjust the speed at which your avatar moves, right-click on it and select "Move speed" in the slider options. The slider at the left of the avatar will become pink, and you can adjust this slider to make the avatar move faster or slower.

Scale an avatar

When you click on the avatar you are holding, a green box with handles appears around the avatar. Drag the handles to resize the avatar; the original proportions will be maintained.

Rotate avatar

Click on the avatar you are holding to see the green frame; at the top is a handle with a small white circle. Click and hold this handle, and drag it to rotate the avatar.

Change opacity

Click on the avatar you are holding to see the green frame. The green slider on the left allows you to decrease or increase the opacity.

When you first drag an avatar onto the stage, it has full opacity as default. If you want the audience to see the avatar fade in, lower the opacity before turning on the lightbulb. Then turn on the lightbulb and raise the opacity.

 

More operations are available via the Right Click Menu

Right-click on the avatar for an additional menu. Read on to discover what these tools allow you to do.

 

 Release

Release allows you to leave the avatar on stage, without having to select another. This could be useful for generating a crowd, as you can bring mulitples of the same avatar onto the stage. Remember however you can only operate one avatar at a time.

Bring forward and send back

When an avatar is placed on the stage, it will appear "in front" of other media that is already there. To move your avatar behind other media, right-click on your avatar to access the context menu and select "Move back". If it is behind other media, you can select "Bring forward".

The Depth tool is another way to change the order of media on the stage. See the chapter Depth tool for information about this.

Animation

If your avatar has multiple frames you can select frames to change individually using the right click menu. You can also play an animation of all the frames, also using right click. Find out more about animation in the next chapter.

 

Manage travel speed

Right-click on the avatar and choose the slider "Move Speed". The slider on the left of the avatar is now pink. This slider controls the speed of your avatar's movement.

 

1. Right-click on the avatar
2. Choose the option Slider: Movement
3. The colour of the slider changes and now it manages the speed of the changes.
4. Lower slider to slow down changes.
5. Increase it to speed up changes.

Change the avatar's nickname in the chat

When you are holding an avatar and type text into the chat input field, the avatar name will appear in the chat window alongside the text. To change this name, * right click * on the avatar and in the context menu select "Avatar name". A pop-up window appears where you can enter a new name. Press "Save" to confirm.

Note: changing the name on the stage will only temporarily change it. If you want to change the name permanently, you need to do this in the Backstage, from the media management interface. See the chapter Modify Media in the Media Management section.

Remove an avatar from the Stage

You can remove the avatar you are holding from the stage in three ways:

• In the right-click context menu, select "Delete";
• Hit the X button on the right side of the avatar's frame; gold
• Hit the delete key on your keyboard.

Removing the avatar from the stage does not unassign it from the stage; it is still available in the Avatar toolbar, just not visible on the stage any more. You can place it back on the stage at any time. See the Media management section for information on how to unassign media from a stage, as well as how to delete media from the server.