Real Time Responsive Animation with Personality

Building on principles from our prior work on procedural texture synthesis we are able to create remarkably lifelike responsively animated characters in real time Rhythmic and stochastic noise functions are used to de ne time varying parameters that drive computer generated puppets Because we are conveying just the texture of motion we are able to avoid computation of dynamics and constraint solvers The subjective impression of dynamics and other subtle in uences on motion can be conveyed with great visual realism by properly tuned expressions containing pseudo random noise functions For example we can make a character appear to be dynamically balancing herself to appear nervous or to be gesturing in a particular way Each move has an internal rhythm and transitions between moves are temporally constrained so that impossible transitions are precluded For example if while the character is walking we specify a dance turn the character will always step into the turn onto the correct weight bearing foot An operator can make a character perform a properly connected sequence of actions while conveying particular moods and attitudes merely by pushing buttons at a high level Potential uses of such high level textural approaches to computer graphic simulation include Role Playing Games simulated conferences clip animation graphical front ends for MUDs Ste Ger and synthetic performances