Methods for Automated Object Placement in Virtual Scenes

This paper introduces a variety of heuristic methods of object placement that can be used within a general scheme for the automatic creation of virtual rooms. The methods allow a room to be populated with objects in a randomised but controllable way, where the choice of method is determined by the object being placed and the target location. Certain combinations of object and location (for example books on a bookshelf) allow very simple methods to be used whilst most general situations are addressed using Stochastic Diffusion Search. The system is integrated with a Physics Engine, to guarantee physically stable configurations. These methods allow naturalistic placement to occur, for example paper within desk-tidy.