Abstract
Avatar facial expression and animation in 3D collaborative virtual environment (CVE) systems are reconstructed through a complex manipulation of muscles, bones, and wrinkles in 3D space. The need for a fast and easy reconstruction approach has emerged in the recent years due to its application in various domains: 3D disaster management, virtual shopping, and military training. In this work we proposed a new script language based on atomic parametric action to easily produce real-time facial animation. To minimize use of the game engine, we introduced script-based component where the user introduces simple short script fragments to feed the engine with a new animation on the fly. During runtime, when an embedded animation is required, an xml file is created and injected into the game engine without stopping or restarting the engine. The resulting animation method preserves the real-time performance because the modification occurs not through the modification of the 3D code that describes the CVE and its objects but rather through modification of the action scenario that rules when an animation happens or might happen in that specific situation.
Highlights
There is a growing interest in online collaborative virtual environment (CVE) applications
We found that using an eXtensible Virtual Environment Markup Language (XVEML) as a general-purpose of event-based state machine language can make the development easier and faster during the runtime and discharge designers and professionals’ programmers
We focus only on the game engine components implemented in the 3D server layer to manage facial animation changes in the VE when there is a need for requirements adjustment
Summary
There is a growing interest in online collaborative virtual environment (CVE) applications. We propose a framework that implements a modular architecture based on atomic simulation concepts to manage both the virtual environment content and avatars behavior in dynamic environments and guarantee continuity during runtime. In BIM (building information modeling) [5] a significant number of developer and graphic designers are needed to represent human behavior in a real-time game environment for fire evacuation to conduct effective information interaction between the building and the avatars. As game engine technology matures and becomes more flexible to 3D environments, programming skills remain a concern and can hamper the development of complex environments Existing programming approaches such as VRML [4], OpenGL [15], X3D [16], and MPEG-4 [2] can build CVE applications. We conclude with a discussion and future direction of system development
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