Real Time Animation of Virtual Humans: A Trade-off Between Naturalness and Control

Virtual humans are employed in many interactive applications using 3D virtual environments, including (serious) games. The motion of such virtual humans should look realistic (or ‘natural’) and allow interaction with the surroundings and other (virtual) humans. Current animation techniques differ in the trade-off they offer between motion naturalness and the control that can be exerted over the motion. We show mechanisms to parametrize, combine (on different body parts) and concatenate motions generated by different animation techniques. We discuss several aspects of motion naturalness and show how it can be evaluated. We conclude by showing the promise of combinations of different animation paradigms to enhance both naturalness and control

VIOLA - A multi-purpose and web-based visualization tool for neuronal-network simulation output

Neuronal network models and corresponding computer simulations are invaluable tools to aid the interpretation of the relationship between neuron properties, connectivity and measured activity in cortical tissue. Spatiotemporal patterns of activity propagating across the cortical surface as observed experimentally can for example be described by neuronal network models with layered geometry and distance-dependent connectivity. The interpretation of the resulting stream of multi-modal and multi-dimensional simulation data calls for integrating interactive visualization steps into existing simulation-analysis workflows. Here, we present a set of interactive visualization concepts called views for the visual analysis of activity data in topological network models, and a corresponding reference implementation VIOLA (VIsualization Of Layer Activity). The software is a lightweight, open-source, web-based and platform-independent application combining and adapting modern interactive visualization paradigms, such as coordinated multiple views, for massively parallel neurophysiological data. For a use-case demonstration we consider spiking activity data of a two-population, layered point-neuron network model subject to a spatially confined excitation originating from an external population. With the multiple coordinated views, an explorative and qualitative assessment of the spatiotemporal features of neuronal activity can be performed upfront of a detailed quantitative data analysis of specific aspects of the data. Furthermore, ongoing efforts including the European Human Brain Project aim at providing online user portals for integrated model development, simulation, analysis and provenance tracking, wherein interactive visual analysis tools are one component. Browser-compatible, web-technology based solutions are therefore required. Within this scope, with VIOLA we provide a first prototype.Comment: 38 pages, 10 figures, 3 table