job opening - 3D human animation

Context:

The project takes place within the ECA system Greta. This ECA system accepts as input a text to be said by the agent. The text has been enriched with information on the manner the text ought to be said (i.e. with which communicative acts it should be said). The behavioral engine computes the synchronized verbal and nonverbal behaviors of the agent. The animation module follows the MPEG-4 and the H-Anim standards. This work is part of the EU project CALLAS (http://www.callas-newmedia.eu/). CALLAS aims to provide a new paradigm for investigating a more comprehensive set of emotions in multimodal interfaces tailored to New Media environments, changing the way we perceive contemporary and future media applications.

Work to be done:

The animation module designed so far has implemented arm movements only. It needs to be extended to the full upper body, in particular to the torso and shoulder. The body animation needs also to produce more fluid animations. A skinning algorithm needs to be added as well. It will make use of the library OGRE to make use of OGRE capabilities for the rendering and skinning properties.

The animation concerns communicative movement. Such a movement is decomposed in various phases (preparation of the movement, stroke, hold, retraction). As body movements and speech are synchronized with each other, the animation module needs to be flexible and allows for adaptation of the movement.

The animation needs to work in real-time.

The animation will be driven through a language command of the type ‘move-shoulder-up’ or ‘bend-torso-forward’. This language follows the BML specification:

http://wiki.mindmakers.org/projects:bml:draft1.0

Pre-requisite: C++, 3D computer graphics

Project Length: 12 months

Place: TELECOM ParisTech

Stipend: around 2000 euros depending on applicant’s qualification

Contact:

Catherine Pelachaud

catherine.pelachaud@telecom-paristech.fr

http://www.tsi.enst.fr/~pelachau