Handbook of Virtual Humans by Nadia Magnenat-Thalmann [Hardback]

Virtual Humans are becoming more and more popular and used in many applications such as the entertainment industry (in both film and games) and medical applications. This comprehensive book covers all areas of this growing industry including face and body motion, body modelling, hair simulation, expressive speech simulation and facial communication, interaction with 3D objects, rendering skin and clothes and the standards for Virtual Humans. Written by a team of current and former researchers at MIRALab, University of Geneva or VRlab, EPFL, this book is the definitive guide to the area. * Explains the concept of avatars and autonomous virtual actors and the main techniques to create and animate them (body and face). * Presents the concepts of behavioural animation, crowd simulation, intercommunication between virtual humans, and interaction between real humans and autonomous virtual humans * Addresses the advanced topics of hair representation and cloth animation with applications in fashion design * Discusses the standards for Virtual Humans, such as MPEG-4 Face Animation and MPEG-4 Body Animation.

Foreword. Preface. 1 An Overview of Virtual Humans (Nadia Magnenat Thalmann and Daniel Thalmann). 2 Face Cloning and Face Motion Capture (Wonsook Lee, Taro Goto, Sumedha Kshirsagar, Tom Molet). 3 Body Cloning and Body Motion Capture (Pascal Fua, Ralf Plaenkers, WonSook Lee, Tom Molet). 4 Anthropometric Body Modeling (Hyewon Seo). 5 Body Motion Control (Ronan Boulic, Paolo Baerlocher). 6 Facial Deformation Models (Prem Kalra, Stephane Garchery, Sumedha Kshirsagar). 7 Body Deformations (Amaury Aubel). 8 Hair Simulation (Sunil Hadap). 9 Cloth Simulation (Pascal Volino, Frédéric Cordier). 10 Expressive Speech Animation and Facial Communication (Sumedha Kshirsagar, Arjan Egges, Stéphane Garchery). 11 Behavioral Animation (Jean-Sébastien Monzani, Anthony Guye-Vuilleme, Etienne de Sevin). 12 Body Gesture Recognition and Action Response (Luc Emering, Bruno Herbelin). 13 Interaction with 3-D Objects (Marcello Kallmann). 14 Groups and Crowd Simulation (Soraia Raupp Musse, Branislav Ulicny, Amaury Aubel). 15 Rendering of Skin and Clothes (Neeharika Adabala). 16 Standards for Virtual Humans (Stéphane Garchery, Ronan Boulic, Tolga Capin, Prem Kalra). Appendix A: Damped Least Square Pseudo-Inverse J+. Appendix B: H-Anim Joint and Segment Topology. Appendix C: Facial Animation Parameter Set . References. Index.