Lightweight Procedural Animation with Believable Physical Interactions

I describe a procedural animation system that uses tech-niques from behavior-based robot control, combined with a minimalist physical simulation, to produce believable cha-racter motions in a dynamic world. Although less realistic than motion capture or full biomechanical simulation, the system produces compelling, responsive character behavior. It is also fast, supports believable physical interactions be-tween characters such as hugging, and makes it easy to au-thor new behaviors. Overview1 Versatile procedural animation is a necessary component for applications such as interactive drama, in which charac-ters participate in complex interactions that cannot be pre-planned at authoring time. Although there have been pro