Synchronization of speech, facial expressions and body gestures is one of the most critical problems in realistic avatar animation in virtual environments. In this paper, we address this problem by proposing a new high-level animation language to describe avatar animation. The Avatar Markup Language (AML), based on XML, encapsulates the Text to Speech, Facial Animation and Body Animation in a u...

In this paper we study how the visual animation of a self-avatar can be artificially modified in real-time in order to generate different haptic perceptions. In our experimental setup, participants could watch their self-avatar in a virtual environment in mirror mode while performing a weight lifting task. Users could map their gestures on the self-animated avatar in real-time using a Kinect. W...

Helen Mason is a consultant occupational therapist with ten years experience of working in the NHS. Her clinical work adapting and designing creative activities which are clinically relevant, effective and meaningful for service users, has led to collaborations and consultancy work with internationally renowned organisations including the Royal College of Art and Imperial College London. Her co...

The growing use of animation in Web pages testifies to the increasing ease with which such multimedia components can be created. This trend indicates a commitment to animation that is often unmatched by the skill of the implementers. The present paper details a set of ten commandments for web animation, intending to sensitise budding animators to key aspects that may impair the communicational ...

BACKGROUND Ever since Dr. John Snow (1813-1854) used a case map to identify water well as the source of a cholera outbreak in London in the 1800s, the use of spatio-temporal maps have become vital tools in a wide range of disease mapping and control initiatives. The increasing use of spatio-temporal maps in these life-threatening sectors warrants that they are accurate, and easy to interpret to...

The paper is devoted to the problems of automatic computer facial animation. Based on the experience of Intel Facial Animation Library (IFAL) development, animation framework, methods, problems and perspectives are analyzed. IFAL is used as a part of “ synthetic video” pipeline, which contains tools for: personified 3D head model creation from video, automatic one-camera face tracking, offline ...

How might capabilities for algorithm animation be seamlessly integrated into a programming language that is both visual and declarative? Until now, visual programming language researchers have not attempted to anwer that question, making the fruits of algorithm animation available only to users of textual programming languages. Users of visual programming languages (VPLs) have been deprived of ...

Physics simulation offers the possibility of truly responsive and realistic animation. Despite wide adoption of physics simulation for the animation of passive phenomena, such as fluids, cloths and rag-doll characters, commercial applications still resort to kinematics-based approaches for the animation of actively controlled characters. However, following a renewed interest in the use of physi...

Over the past decade, there has been a rapid rise in the use of three-dimensional (3D) animation to depict molecular and cellular processes. Much of the growth in molecular animation has been in the educational arena, but increasingly, 3D animation software is finding its way into research laboratories. In this review, I will discuss a number of ways in which 3d animation software can play a va...