Texture synthesis based simulation of secondary agents

Abstract

Realistic simulation of virtual characters is essential in many applications and particularly in computer games. Having a realistic simulation of an agent is a complex matter since there are many different ways in which the real equivalent would have responded in real life. In addition a human viewer is very accustomed to observing other humans so the slightest inconsistency will be picked up. The complexity of the task increases when we address the simulation of groups of virtual agents interacting amongst them. In this paper we argue that, given the current state of the art, example based methods provide a lot of promise in addressing the realistic simulation. We start by discussing the recently proposed example based methods and then continue to present a novel approach based on texture synthesis. Although it is still work in progress, some preliminary results indicate that this is a viable approach that could potentially achieve results not so easily reached with rule based methods. © 2008 Springer Berlin Heidelberg.