In

No abstract

No abstract

We describe the HUMANOID environment dedicated to human modeling and animation for general multimedia, VR, and CAD applications integrating virtual humans. We present the design of the system and the integration of the various features: generic modeling of a large class of entities with the BODY data structure, realistic skin deformation for body and hands, facial animation, collision detection, integrated motion control and parallelization of computation intensive tasks.

No abstract

Motion-capture techniques are rarely based on orientation measurements for two main reasons: (1) optical motion-capture systems are designed for tracking object position rather than their orientation (which can be deduced from several trackers), (2) known animation techniques, like inverse kinematics or geometric algorithms, require position targets constantly, but orientation inputs only occasionally. We propose a complete human motion-capture technique based essentially on orientation measurements. The position measurement is used only for recovering the global position of the performer. This method allows fast tracking of human gestures for interactive applications as well as high rate recording. Several motion-capture optimizations, including the multijoint technique, improve the posture realism. This work is well suited for magnetic-based systems that rely more on orientation registration (in our environment) than position measurements that necessitate difficult system calibration.

In this paper we present a virtual tennis game. We describe the creation and modeling of the virtual humans and body deformations, also showing the real-time animation and rendering aspects of the avatars. We focus on the animation of the virtual tennis ball and the behavior of a synthetic, autonomous referee who judges the tennis games. The networked, collaborative, virtual environment system is described with special reference to its interfaces to driver programs. We also mention the virtual reality (VR) devices that are used to merge the interactive players into the virtual tennis environment, together with the equipment and technologies employed for this exciting experience. We conclude with remarks on personal experiences during the game and on future research topics to improve parts of the presented system.

We investigate how the movement measurement technologies developed for Virtual Reality applications can be applied to track in real-time the full body posture of a human being. The accuracy of this information is of definite importance to evaluate the feasibility of complex tasks involving human beings. We present a full body movement measurement approach. It provides a realistic conversion in real-time with a reasonable number of sensors. Associated with the hand movement measurement and correction algorithms we provide a pertinent visual and vibrotactile feedback to the performer.