"We performed a study on the impact of biological inspired principles used in the simulation of groups and large populations. Results were reported publicly in the paper “Human Crowd Simulation: What Can We Learn From Alife?”, presented in the 15th International Conference on the Synthesis and Simulation of Living Systems (ALIFE XV).
We developed an ALife model, inspired by biological societies, for autonomous populations of virtual characters. Results and model were published in the paper “Bio-Inspired Virtual Populations: Adaptive Behavior with Affective Feedback.” in the 29th Conference on Computer Animation and Social Agents in Conference (CASA2016). An additional video documenting the main features of the model was produced. This AI model was posteriorly refined and simplified, in a trade-off between its complexity and the quality of the generated behavior.
We developed a first case study, the medieval village of Mértola, with integration of the AI model developed animating the population of virtual humans. The case-study took the form of a standalone application of the simulation of the village and it required a) interaction with Arqueologists from Campo Arqueologico de Mértola and b) coordination of work with Professors and Students from FCL, and c) artwork on 3d models. The process of execution of the simulation was reported in the papers “Virtual cities inhabited by autonomous characters: a pipeline for their production”, presented at the 8th International Congress on Archaeology, Computer Graphics, Cultural Heritage and Innovation (Arqueologica 2.0) and ""Animating with a Self-organizing Population the Reconstruction of Medieval Mértola , presented at 15th Eurographics Workshop on Graphics and Cultural Heritage, and “From Self-Portraits To Medieval Simulations: Computational Artificial Ecosystems As Multicontextual Authoring Tools”, presented at the conference Artech 2017. We further have presented this work at the Summer-school Salento VR17.
We have developed a generative tool, Easy-Population, to enable non-programmers from the cultural heritage sector to create their own populations. This tool integrates the AI model in a user-friendly way, following a drag-and-drop design paradigm. It was posteriorly published at the Unity3d asset store, widening the scope of users to other sectors such as the game development and the architecture communities.
We developed a second case study, a neighborhood in medieval Silves, in the South of Portugal. The population of this simulation was generated by the technicians from the Archaeology Musem of Silves, using the software tool developed. The case-study took the form of a) a standalone application allowing first-person virtual visits to the simulated area, and b) a VR application. The VR experience was exhibited at the main tower of the castle of the village, overviewing the simulated site. To build this final case-study, we had to interact with the Archaeologists from the Archaeology Museum of Silves, to coordinate the process of modelling 3d assets with the Professors and Students from FCL, and integrate the researcher’s own art work on those 3d models, landscape and characters.
The overall project was additionally presented next to specialist audiences in two workshops of the H2020 project ViMM (Virtual Multimodal Museum), and the researcher was also invited to present it in a keynote presentation at the Videogames Conference VJ17.
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