Gavw Virtual Crying

Start date: 1 November 2007
Student: Wijnand van Tol
Supervisor: Arjan Egges

Description
Animation of virtual characters is getting more realistic. Pre-rendered animations almost look life-like. Thanks to motion capture and motion blending, a lot is possible in real-time animation as well. In games and simulations however, there is very little display of emotion. An example of a recent game using emotions is Oblivion: Elder Scrolls IV. The use of emotions here is very limited. There are four emotions that an NPC (non player character) can have, and these are expressed very statically. A preview of the game "Heavy Rain" showed the first crying woman in real-time 3D. The emotions shown in this real-time movie look almost life-like, but are directly taken from motion capture. They follow a scripted event which the viewer has no effect on. For a player or viewer to have control over the emotions of an NPC, crying in particular, we should be able to generate a crying expression, with tears, on the fly, by using parameters which determine the mood of the NPC.

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