Local and Global Control in Computer Animation

Abstract



In the past few years a lot of effort has been done on modelling computer animation schemes through physical laws. Indeed, the behavior of almost all characters in an animation or in a simulation can be represented by mathematical tools, such as differential calculus. On the other hand, interactions among actors and the animator suggest some other approach. Following this line of inquiry we split the computer animation control problem in two parts: a local control problem and a global control problem. The local control defines the "behavior" of each character, while the global control is responsible for the interactions. In this paper we propose an event oriented scheme to solve the control problem. This has been done using concepts regarding to DEDS (Discrete Event Dynamic System) and ESM (Extended State Machines).