Publications by Daniel Thalmann

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We present a system dedicated to the real-time production of multimedia products and TV shows involving multiple virtual actors and presenters. This system, named VHD (virtual human director), may also be used for character animation on high-level systems and interaction with Web-based applications. The user can create virtual stories by directing all actions in real time. It is similar to a movie producer directing actors during filming but with more control given to the director in the sense that everythi

We have developed a learning platform to simplify and improve teaching and practice of computer graphics for beginners and advanced students. Our goal is to offer a set of tools to help students having a better mental vision of the abstract notions introdu ...

We present an animation interface designed to conveniently control the motion capture process. The transition of performer's hand gestures tracked by a dataglove is recognized for software remote control. An intuitive camera metaphor allows one to specify the viewpoint location using the magnetic sensors strapped to the performer's head. The human motion capture is based on the Anatomical Converter, a toolkit to convert sensor measurements into human anatomical rotations in real time. An improved human moti

MPEG is traditionally committed to the coding and compression of audio-visual data from natural sources. However, the emerging MPEG-4 standard aims not only at encoding the multiple natural audio-visual objects composing the scene, but also synthetic audio and video to be integrated with the natural objects. It also allows more interaction with both synthetic and natural objects. Networked collaborative virtual environments (NCVEs) have a wide range of different networking requirements. This paper analyzes

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 algorit

An innovative way of animating actors at a high level based on the concept of synthetic vision is presented. The objective is simple: to create an animation involving a synthetic actor automatically moving in a corridor avoiding objects and other synthetic actors. To simulate this behaviour, each synthetic actor uses a synthetic vision as its perception to the world and so, as the unique input to its behavioural model. This model is based on the concept of displacement local automata (DLA), which is similar

We present an image-based rendering technique to represent virtual humans in real-time. Though we deal only with virtual humans, the concept can be applied to any articulated character. Our technique is termed animated impostors because it extends the notion of dynamic impostors to take into account changes in the character's appearance. We also show how impostors can be embedded into large-scale simulations/applications

Nowadays, crowds of virtual characters are used in many domains such as neurosciences, psychology, and computer sciences. Since as human beings, we are natural experts in human being representation and movement, it makes it that much harder to correctly mo ...

This paper proposes a paradigm for specification of virtual human agents` level of autonomy. The idea we present in this paper aims at optimising the required complexity of agents in order to perform realistic simulations. The paradigm is based on the distribution of the required virtual human agent “intelligence” to other simulation entities like groups of agents, and objects

This paper summarizes recent experiences and case studies to model behaviors of virtual humans in three typical situations: interaction with complex objects, interaction with the user in immersive environments, and social behaviors in crowds

Interaction between real and virtual humans covers a wide range of topics from creation and animation of virtual actors to computer vision techniques for data acquisition from real world. We discuss the design and implementation of an augmented reality system which allows investigation of different real/virtual interaction aspects. As an example we present an application to create real time interactive drama with real and virtual actors

In this paper, we present a case study using a spreadsheet-like interface for exploring biomedical datasets generated by a biomechanical model of the hip. The case we analyze here is an osteotomy corrective surgery that reorients the femoral body in relation to the femoral neck, somewhat like the intertrochanteric osteotomy described by Imhäuser (2). That is a procedure recommended by most authors as a surgical treatment of severe slipped capital femoral epiphysis. Then we compare estimated contact area of

A new approach for human skin modeling and deformation based on cross-sectional methods is presented. Internally, the authors use dynamic trimmed parametric patches for describing the smooth deformation of skin pieces; then they polygonalize parametric patches for final body skin synthesis and rendering. Simple and intuitive, their method combines the advantages of both parametric and polygonal representations. Produces very realistic body deformations, and allows the display of surface models at several le

There are basically four problems to solve in order to produce realistic animated synthetic actors with hair: hair modeling and creation, hair motion, collision detection and hair rendering. The authors describe a complete methodology to solve these basic four problems. They present how hair styles may be designed with a Hair Styler module. They survey the animation model and emphasize a method of collision processing. Finally, they explain how hair may be rendered using an extension of a standard ray-traci

We propose an efficient method for animation of virtual human models in an environment of obstacles. A nearby target location reachable by a human figure is given and a search is performed in the object space encompassing obstacles to obtain an optimum configuration. The goal is realized by simplifying the configuration space of a human model into two dimensions and then projecting a discretized object space onto it. The discretization is carried out using DDA (digital differential analyzer used in fast lin

The goal of our work aims at implementing progressively an action selection affective model for virtual humans that should be in the end autonomous, adaptive and sociable. Affect, traditionallydistinguished from "cold" cognition, regroups emotions and moti ...

Virtual Environments (VE) are mainly visual experiments that exclude visually impaired people. In this paper we present an application that should allow almost everybody to ``see'' or at least to perceive 3D shapes. We will first describe the mandatory asp ...

We present a method for improving robustness in feature-based tracking of human motion. Motion flows of features estimated by a standard tracker are modified to be coherent with neighboring ones. This coherence constraint is computed based on a smooth approximation to initial motion flows computed by the tracker. With these tracking results, we demonstrate motion segmentation of different body parts in an image sequence

In this paper, we present current research developments in the area of autonomous virtual actors. We first define formal requirements for true virtual humans. After a brief description of the perception action principles with a few simple examples, we emphasize the concept of virtual sensors for virtual humans. In particular, we describe in details our experiences in implementing virtual vision, tactile and audition. We then describe perception-based locomotion, a multisensor based method of automatic grasp

This paper addresses the problem of grasping rigid and deformable objects in a task-level animation system. After an introduction on task planning and grasping, it emphasizes the use of FEM for modelling both elastically and plastically deformations of objects, and impacts with or without penetration between deformable objects. A numerical method based on finite element theory allows us to take into account the active forces of the fingers on the object and the reactive forces of the object on the fingers

Daniel Thalmann

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VHD: a system for directing real-time virtual actors

Mental vision: a computer graphics teaching platform

An animation interface designed for motion capture

MPEG-4 for networked collaborative virtual environments

An architecture for immersive evaluation of complex human tasks

A vision-based approach to behavioural animation

Lowering the cost of virtual human rendering with structured animated impostors

Gaze Behaviors for Virtual Crowd Characters

Level of autonomy for virtual human agents

Individual and group behaviours for virtual humans

Interaction between real and virtual humans in augmented reality

Stress Distribution Visualization on Pre- and Post-Operative Virtual Hip Joint

Human skin deformation from cross-sections

An integrated system for modeling, animating and rendering hair

A configuration space approach for efficient animation of human figures

An Affective Model of Action Selection for Virtual Humans

Visualization Learning for Visually Impaired People

Robust tracking and segmentation of human motion in an image sequence

Virtual sensors: a key tool for the artificial life of virtual actors

Finite elements in task-level animation