Motion Control in Animation, Simulation, and Visualization

This paper discusses the role and the evolution of animation, simulation and scientific visualization and their relationships. Two trends are described: (1) the physical laws are well-known and their use improves the animation (2) the physical laws are not really wellknown and the animation techniques contribute to understand them. We distinguish descriptive models used to reproduce an effect without knowledge about its cause and generative models describing the cause which produces the effects. Cooperation between descriptive and generative models is also discussed as well as man-machine interface constraints. Finally, the evolution of animation towards automatic motion control, goaloriented motion, task modeling and behavioral animation is emphasized. 1. Animation, simulation and visualization