Proposing a Co-simulation Model for Coupling Heterogeneous Character Animation Systems

摘要

Nowadays, character animation systems are used in different domains ranging from gaming to production industries. The utilized technologies range from physics based simulation, inverse kinematics and motion blending to machine learning methods. Most of the available approaches are however tightly coupled with the development environment, thus inducing high porting efforts if being incorporated into different platforms. Currently, no standard exists which allows to exchange complex character animation approaches. A comprehensive simulation using these heterogeneous technologies is therefore not possible, yet. In a different domain than character animation, the Functional Mock-up Interface (FMI) has already solved this problem. Initially being tailored to industrial needs, the standards allows to exchange dynamic simulation approaches like solvers for mechatronic components. Recently, based on this standard, a novel concept has been proposed which allows to embed various character animation approaches within a common framework using so called Motion Model Units. In this paper, we extend the proposed Motion Model Unit architecture and present a novel co-simulation approach which orchestrates several sub-simulations in a common environment. The proposed co-simulation can handle concurrent motions, generated by heterogeneous character animation technologies, while creating feasible results. The applicability of the novel co-simulation approach is underlined by a user study.