Generating Animation from Natural Language Texts and Framework of Motion Database

This paper presents an animation system that generates an animation from natural language texts such as movie scripts or stories. We also propose the framework of a motion database that stores many motion clips for various characters. When an input text is given, the system searches for an appropriate motion clip from the database for each verb in the input text. Temporal constraints between verbs are also extracted from the input text. The searched motion clips are scheduled based on these temporal constraints. In addition, when necessary, some automatic motions such as locomotion, taking an instrument, changing posture, and cooperative motions are searched from the database. An animation is then generated using an external motion synthesis system. Using our system, users can make use of existing motion clips. Moreover, because it takes natural language text as input, even novice users can use our system.