Nadia Magnenat-Thalmann & Daniel Thalmann 
Handbook of Virtual Humans 

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.

Table of Content

Preface.

List of Contributors.

List of Figures.

List of Tables.

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, Won Sook 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+¯A.

Appendix B: H-Anim Joint and Segment Topology.

Appendix C: Facial Animation Parameter Set .

References.

Index.

About the author

Professor Nadia Magnenat Thalmann is an eminent computer graphics scientist who is the founder and head of MIRALab at the University of Geneva. She presently serves as the Director of the Institute for Media Innovation in Singapore at Nanyang Technological University. Prof. Daniel Thalmann is a Swiss and Canadian Computer Scientist and a pioneer in Virtual Humans. He is currently Honorary Professor at EPFL, Switzerland, and Director of Research Development at MIRALab Sarl.