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M.I.T. - Synthetic Characters Group - 3D Character Animation

M.I.T. Media Lab / Synthetic Characters Group does experiments with artificial intelligence. Lead by Bruce Blumberg, who you have seen on TV talking with Alan Alda, and Cynthia Breazeal, who also makes artificially intelligent robots, they set up an environment in the computer, where characters, can learn, from input from the environment.

In this case, the character was projected onto a large glass pane, about four feet square, and through infrared tracking, the character, a mouse, could follow the motion of a large piece of non-digital cheese, that was manipulated by real people passing by.

sample movie1 / sneak walk
sample movie1 / quick turn
The artificial intelligence is very interesting, but the basic motion, works the same way as motion works in any real time video game engine. Animated loops, poses, and transitions are imported into the engine, from Maya, and then played and blended to create the fluid motion of a seemingly live character.