An integrated control view of synthetic actors

This paper presents the global design of a system for synthetic actor animation. We discuss the concepts that must be part of an ideal animation system: actor creation, key framing, positional constraints, adaptive motion control, trajectory planning and task planning. A complete diagram of the components of such a system is presented together with the relations between these components. keywords: synthetic actor, task planning, kinematics, dynamics, constraints The synthetic actor approach Three-dimensional human modeling and animation have existed for more than 15 years . However emphasis has been placed on separate aspects of this animation. For example, a great deal of research has been done on the modeling and animation of the body 3 4 , on facial animation 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 and hand animation 14 15 . More recently, researchers have incorporated mechanical aspects factors into the animation of articulated bodies 18 19 20 21 . Also task level factors have been studied by several researchers 23 24 25 ;. Other authors have tried to animate more realistic characters, from an image synthesis point of view, but using primitive methods like rotoscopy or image-based keyframe animation. The synthetic approach corresponds to an integration of all methods, allowing the creation of 3D characters, with the appearance of real human characters. Ideal synthetic actors should satisfy the following criteria: they should have the appearance of real persons their behavior should be similar to that of real persons they should have their own personality: two different actors should have different personalties, i.e. different reactions to the same situation they should be directed by task level commands they should be conscious of their environment they should at least be able to walk, speak, have emotions, and grasp objects their body and face should be naturally deformed during motions Existing people, dead or alive can be recreated as synthetic actors or synthetic actresses. But fictitious people may also be created in this way. Research in this area implies the development of techniques: