ylfink@water.UUCP (11/13/87)
DEPARTMENT OF COMPUTER SCIENCE
UNIVERSITY OF WATERLOO
SEMINAR ACTIVITIES
COMPUTER GRAPHICS SEMINAR
- Thursday, November 26, 1987
Dr. Colin Ware, of the University of New Brunswick,
will speak on ``Low Level Stimulus Response
Animation''.
TIME: 3:30 PM
ROOM: MC 6082
ABSTRACT
In Stimulus-Response (S-R) animation an animated
sequence is achieved by making the actors behave like
organisms, responding to stimuli in their immediate
environments. The essence of programming this form of
animation is that actors are told how to behave with
respect to one another, and the social system thus
created is allowed to evolve over time creating an
animated sequence.
Evidence from the psychological literature shows that
the simple motion of geometric objects can be
powerfully evocative of animal-like or ``animate''
behaviour. Thus, we explore the possibility of
creating ``behaviour functions'' which model S-R
relationships as a method for controlling the motion of
object in animated sequences.
We present a way of classifying S-R systems based on 1)
sensory and response capabilities, 2) whether the
animation is ``high or low end'' 3) whether the
animation is stochastic or deterministic, 4) whether
message passing or ``sensing'' is used, and 5) the
temporal definition of the stimulus.
We describe an interactive low level deterministic
system designed for the rapid prototyping of animated
sequences. The stimuli are defined over at most two
previous time intervals. Results are presented
illustrating the range of behaviours which we have
succeeded in synthesizing and the potential and
disadvantages of this style of programmed animation are
discussed.