Virtual-human animation deals with animating human-like virtual characters in 3D. In the context of crowds, we can distinguish between single-human and crowd animation. Both tend to create more and more realistic motions.
Animating characters can be achieved by different means:
- Hand-drawn animation, in which artists draw several ‘key poses’ defining the position of the character at different moments during a movement. Then, other artists draw the positions between two key frames to obtain the most natural looking animation.
- Motion-capture techniques improve the realism and reduce the time required to animate characters, by recording motions of real actors and play it on virtual characters. In crowds, it is possible to use the same motion-capture data for multiple characters.
- Physical simulations, in which biomechanical laws define a set of constraints which are solved by optimization in order to obtain moving characters.
In the context of crowds, where groups of virtual humans are presented on screen, realism is key. However, animating large number of characters is costly in terms of time and computation time. Thus, we are interested in improving character animation by personalizing their motion and behavior according to the motion and behavior of real humans.
[More information will be added soon.]
