Publications by Daniel Thalmann

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Presents an integration framework for heterogeneous motion generators. The objective is to outline issues that are currently easily solved in the professional post-processing systems used in film and game production but which cannot be transposed “as-is” to real-time systems with autonomous agents. We summarise our approach for articulated agent modelling and their animation by combining heterogeneous motion generators, such as real-time motion capturing, key-framing, inverse kinematics and proc

In networked virtual environments (NVEs), users are represented by their virtual embodiments. The articulated structure of these embodiments introduces a new complexity in the representation and streaming of animations, especially when the number of participants in the simulation increases. This requires real-time algorithms to decrease the networking overhead. The dead-reckoning technique is a way to reduce the required bit rate, and has been used for simple nonarticulated objects in popular NVE systems. W

We first describe the state of the art in cloth modeling and animation, followed by our first approach to modeling a skirt, then any dress, for a fixed synthetic actress. In this system, clothes were assembled from panels directly on the actress. We then describe a more general system, able to create autonomous clothes which may be worn by any synthetic human. We explain the method for creating both the clothes and the virtual humans

This real-time augmented reality demonstration relies on our tracking algorithm described in V. Lepetit et al (2003). This algorithm considers natural feature points, and then does not require engineering of the environment. It merges the information from preceding frames in traditional recursive tracking fashion with that provided by a very limited number of reference frames. This combination results in a system that does not suffer from jitter and drift, and can deal with drastic changes. The tracker reco

We hereby present a study whose aim is to evaluate the efficiency and flexibility of virtual reality as a therapeutic tool in the confines of a social phobia behavioural therapeutic program. Our research protocol, accepted by the ethical commission of the ...

We show that we can effectively fit complex animation models to noisy image data. Our approach is based on robust least squares adjustment and takes advantage of three complementary sources of information: stereo data, silhouette edges and 2D feature points. We take stereo to be our main information source and use the other two whenever available. In this way, complete head models-including ears and hair-can be acquired with a cheap and entirely passive sensor, such as an ordinary video camera. The motion p

A common problem in virtual character computer animation concerns the preservation of the basic foot-floor constraint (or footplant), consisting in detecting it before enforcing it. This paper describes a system capable of generating motion while continuou ...

Motion capture systems usually work in conjunction with complex 3D applications, such as 3D Studio Max by Kinetix or Maya by Alias/Wavefront. Once models have been created in these applications, motion capture systems provide the necessary data input to animate these models. The context of this paper introduces a simple motion capture system, which is integrated into a Web-based application, thus allowing HANIM humanoids to be animated using VRML and Java. Since Web browser/VRML plugin context is commonly a

Availability of Visible Human Dataset (VHD) has provided numerous possibilities for its exploitation in both medical applications and 3D animation. We present our interactive tools which enable extraction of surfaces for different organs, including bones, muscles, fascia, and skin, from the VHD. The reconstructed surfaces then are used for defining the interrelationship of organs, a process we refer to as topological modeling. A database is constructed, which encapsulates structural, topological, mechanical

An operating system compiler written in PASCAL allows the programmer to write operating systems for a very general abstract mini-computer, and produces code for the mini-computer of his choice. This approach provides global optimization, good documentation and improved reliability of operating systems, as well as complete portability. One such portable operating system called SOD has been written and runs on Nova and PDP-11 mini-computers

Augmented reality (AR) environments are suffering from a limited workspace. In addition, registration issues are also increased by the use of a mobile camera on the user that provides a first-person perspective (1PP). Using several fixed cameras reduces th ...

Non-verbal communication (NVC) makes up about two-thirds of all communication between two people or between one speaker and a group of listeners. However, this fundamental aspect of communicating is mostly omitted in 3D social forums or virtual world orien ...

The use of inhabited Virtual Environments is continuously growing. People can embody a human-like avatar to participate inside these Virtual Environments or they can have personalized character acting as mediator; sometimes they can even customize it to so ...

Representing motions as linear sums of principal components has become a widely accepted animation technique. While powerful, the simplest version of this approach is not particularly well suited to modeling the specific style of an individual whose motion had not yet been recorded when building the database: it would take an expert to adjust the PCA weights to obtain a motion style that is indistinguishable from his. Consequently, when realism is required, the current practice is to perform a full motion c

Summary form only given. Telepresence is the future of multimedia systems and will allow participants to share professional and private experiences, meetings, games, parties. The concepts of distributed virtual environments are a key technology to implement this telepresence. Using virtual humans within the shared environment is a essential supporting tool for presence. Real-time realistic 3D avatars will be essential in the future, but we will need interactive perceptive actors to populate the virtual worl

This paper develops the concept of mediators: virtual interfaces with haptic feedback for teleoperation. Our approach is to replace physical operator interfaces by fully parameterizable adaptive virtual interfaces. Mediators open new possibilities for mult ...

Agents in virtual environments require a combination of perception and action to behave in an autonomous way. We extend a software architecture for the management of actions blending, called AGENTlib, with a perception mechanism. The perception system provides a uniform interface to various techniques in the field of virtual perception, including synthetic vision, database access and perception persistency. We describe the framework we designed to efficiently filter valuable information from the scene and w

The contribution of this paper focuses on the definition of a multimedia application targeted at turning CGI films into a richer and more interactive experience. We combine highquality animated graphics to present a compelling story and enrich it by introducing a certain degree of interactivity: allowing the user to watch films using different camera paths. One of the main goals is to provide alternative ways to observe different facets of the same story, different versions according to user profiles and pr

The MPEG-4 standard specifies a set of low-level animation parameters for body animation, but does not provide any high-level functionality for the control of avatars or embodied agents. In this paper we discuss the required features for a script format allowing designers to easily specify complex bodily behaviors, and describe a system and its associated syntax - Body Animation Script (BAS) - which fulfills these requirements in a flexible way. The described architecture allows the organization and paramet

This paper proposes a novel method to control virtual characters in dynamic environments. A virtual character is animated by a locomotion and jumping engine, enabling production of continuous parameterized motions. At any time during runtime, flat obstacle ...

Daniel Thalmann

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Versatile tuning of humanoid agent activity

A dead-reckoning technique for streaming virtual human animation

3D clothes and fashion show

Real-time augmented face

Use of Virtual Reality as Therapeutic Tool for Behavioural Exposure in the Ambit of Social

From synthesis to analysis: fitting human animation models to image data

Robust on-line adaptive footplant detection and enforcement for locomotion

Real-time animation and motion capture in Web Human Director (WHD)

3D interactive topological modeling using visible human dataset

SPIP: A way of writing portable operating systems

Intelligent switch: An algorithm to provide the best third-person perspective in augmented reality

An Event-Based Architecture to Manage Virtual Human Non-Verbal Communication in 3D Chatting Environment

In Search for your own Virtual Individual

Style-based Motion Synthesis

Populating the virtual worlds with interactive perceptive virtual actors

Mediators: virtual haptic interfaces for tele-operated robots

An efficient and flexible perception pipeline for autonomous agents

Augmented CGI Films

Specifying MPEG-4 body behaviors

Dynamic Obstacle Clearing for Real-time Character Animation