A multi-resolution technique for real-time animation of large crowds

Abstract

This paper proposes a multi-resolution technique for real-time animation of large crowds, which is useful for massively multi-player online games. Skinning is used to animate non-player characters (NPCs) at close proximity as well as player characters, vertex keyframe animation is used for middle-distance NPCs, and impostors are used for rendering long-distance NPCs. Both of skinning and vertex keyframe animation are accelerated by GPU, and each character is animated independently of the others. The experiments show that hundreds of thousands of characters can be animated at real-time. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2006.