The world of virtual actors

The long-term objective of our research is the visualization of the simulation of thebehavior of realistic human beings, called synthetic actors , in a given environment,interactively decided by the animator. The ultimate reason for developing realistic-lookingsynthetic actors is to be able to use them in virtually any scene that re-creates the real world.However, a virtual scene -- beautiful though it may be -- is not complete without people....Virtual people, that is. Scenes involving synthetic actors imply many complex problemswe have been solving for several years (Magnenat-Thalmann and Thalmann 1991).Behavioral techniques make possible the automating of high-level control of actors suchas path planning. By changing the parameters ruling this automating, it is possible to givea different personality to each actor. This behavioral approach is a major step relatively tothe conventional motion control techniques. Another complex objective is modeling humanfacial anatomy exactly, including movements to satisfy both structural and functionalaspects of simulation. In order to improve the realism of synthetic actors, there are twoimportant features to render: hair and clothes. Realistic hair has long been an unresolvedproblem because the great number of geometrical primitives involved and the potentialdiversity of the curvature of each strand of hair make it a formidable task to manage.Dressing synthetic actors with complex clothes is also a challenge. It is somewhat difficult