Research Problems for Creating Digital Actors

An interesting challenge for the computer graphics community is to use computer graphics technology to simulate digital actors that seem so real that people cannot tell whether they are animated or real. Our group is engaged in an ongoing project to develop and integrate the techniques required for creating digital actors. In particular, our research has been focused on components such as facial animation, hair animation, clothing animation, and body animation, which are crucial to the successful realization of digital actors. This article summarizes the results of our research on those topics, reviews other approaches that have been taken in digital actor research, and outlines the challenges that must be overcome in this area.