Virtual RoboCup: Real-Time 3D Visualization of 2D Soccer Games

Virtual RoboCup is a real-time 3D visualization tool for 2D simulated soccer games as played in the RoboCup simulation league. Players are modeled as anthropmorphic gures that are animated stepkeepingly with the underlying 2D simulation. Important aspects of player animation concern the generation of natural 3D player movements and realistic player-ball interactions during kicks. A key contribution of Virtual RoboCup is its novel approach to task-level animation in which task-level directives for 3D animation of anthropomorphic characters are generated via on-line classi cation of fast paced 2D simulation data. As further contribution, we investigated to what extend observers perceptually process the level of detail in naturalistic character animations. A psychological experiment was designed to test the e ectiveness of 3D body animation. Although observers failed to notice di erences in animation detail, clear e ects of character animation on perceived skill were found. We conclude from these results that is is very well justi ed to spend valuable computational resources on richness of detail in realtime character animation.