Simulation of genetic inheritance in the generation of virtual characters

Nowadays, applications of virtual reality (VR) and computer games use human characters models with ever-increasing sophistication. Additional challenges are posed by applications, such as life-simulation computer games (The Sims, Spore, etc.), internet-based virtual worlds (Second Life) and animation movies, that require simulation of kinship and interaction between isolated populations with well defined ethnic characteristics. The main difficulty in those situations is to generate models automatically, which are physically similar to a given population or family. In this paper, human reproduction is mimicked to produce character models, which inherit genetic characteristics from their ancestors. Unlike morphing techniques, in our method, it is possible that a genetic characteristic from an ancestor be manifested only after a few generations.