Near-optimal Character Animation with Continuous Control

A. Treuille, Y. Lee and Z. Popović

We present a new model for real-time character animation with multidimensional, interactive control. The underlying motion engine is data-driven, enables rapid transitions, and automatically enforces foot-skate constraints without inverse kinematics. On top of this motion space, our algorithm learns approximately optimal controllers which use a compact basis representation to guide the system through multidimensional state-goal spaces. These controllers enable real-time character animation that fluidly responds to changing user directives and environmental constraints.

http://aigamedev.com/animation/optimal-continuous-control

Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• character
• animation
• artificial
• intelligence
• game
• development

[sodie77]

It's probably massively CPU intensive. Even the current batch of character animations needs to be highly compressed so that they won't kill the processing power.

[pwnageprata]

would be awesome in GTA

[WhiteDragon103]

I wish they wouldn't use jargons. The process makes sense, but their explanation of it sounds like gibberish to someone who is indifferent to their terminology.

[LokiClock]

The intersections could possibly be eliminated entirely, and realistically, by having the person stop for a few moments if a collision is inevitable.

[conradhw]

Very effective. I wonder if foot-skate constraints also mean the angle of placement of the feet (and toe area if you want to go deeper) when you have an angled surface. Is there a downloadable demo of this?