This was my first job after retraining into multimedia
The Torson Humanoid is an interesting saga with an unusual beggining and end.
This multimillion dollar project spawned from a Physiotherapist with a rubber sausage manufactured and designed in South Australia all the way to an international company with over 50 employees back to the rubber sausage again.
The rubber sausage is known as a "BodyBolster". It was a way of making floor exercises into something that needs equipment. Rather than something that gets drawn on a sheet of paper by a physio as stick figures and demonstrated during the visit.
How to use the bolster with the floor exercises was illustrated on a large wall chart known as a "Stretch Station". This is where the computers got involved.
Rather than using a pen an paper to illustrate, a computer package called "Poser" was used to pose a model of the human body into the start and end poses of the stretch and a few dots to show which muscles were being stretched.
Once the still images were produced the concept of making them animate was explored. Once they were animated you needed a better way to access the computer files, so an interface was required.
The first version of animation were made using Adobe Acrobat and Poser.
The level of detail then increased using more detailed models, better animation and wider variety of movements.
Models were created to submillimetre detail of each bone, muscle and tendon in the human body
Content experts in the form of physiotherapists and personal trainers were employed
Software engineers were employed to extend the modelling and animation package 3dsmax
Interface designers and multimedia authors packages the content into a system to have a virtual trainer in gyms.
Sales people were hired to tap into the american market.
Needless to say a lot of money was spent and some pretty marvellous breakthroughs were made.
But by June 2001 the dot com tech wreck was in effect and the company was shut down
Some of the IP was re purposed into current products
