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 define 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 influences 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 [15], [a, and synthetic performances.