Path planning directed motion control of virtual humans in complex environments

Natural motion synthesis of virtual humans have been studied extensively, however, motion control of virtual characters actively responding to complex dynamic environments is still a challenging task in computer animation. It is a labor and cost intensive animator-driven work to create realistic human motions of character animations in a dynamically varying environment in movies, television and video games. To solve this problem, in this paper we propose a novel approach of motion synthesis that applies the optimal path planning to direct motion synthesis for generating realistic character motions in response to complex dynamic environment. In our framework, SIPP (Safe Interval Path Planning) search is implemented to plan a globally optimal path in complex dynamic environments. Three types of control anchors to motion synthesis are for the first time defined and extracted on the obtained planning path, including turning anchors, height anchors and time anchors. Directed by these control anchors, highly interactive motions of virtual character are synthesized by motion field which produces a wide variety of natural motions and has high control agility to handle complex dynamic environments. Experimental results have proven that our framework is capable of synthesizing motions of virtual humans naturally adapted to the complex dynamic environments which guarantee both the optimal path and the realistic motion simultaneously.