Project description
Next-gen VR/AR characters for animation industry
As virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) worlds and technologies continue to develop and attract millions of gamers all over the world, the European AR/VR market must take steps to become competitive. The EU-funded CLIPE project aims to achieve this by bringing a new generation of innovators – trained in research and for the industry – in the field of designing VR-ready characters for VR/AR productions. The CLIPE consortium of European partners, who represent fields ranging from computer graphics and animation to psychology and perception, will train students to design the next generation of naturalistic, highly interactive virtual characters. These will be based on innovative research combining machine learning, animation, and simulation techniques to introduce realistic quality, experiences and communication abilities.
Objective
The primary objective of CLIPE is to train a generation of innovators and researchers in the field of virtual characters
simulation and animation and help bringing Europe at the forefront of the field.
Advances in technology are pushing towards making VR/AR worlds a daily experience. Whilst virtual characters are an
important component of these worlds, bringing them to life and giving them interaction and communication abilities requires
highly specialized programming combined with artistic skills, and considerable investments: millions spent on armies of
coders and designers to develop video-games is a typical example.
The research objective of CLIPE is to design the next-generation of VR-ready characters. CLIPE is addressing the most
important current aspect of the problem: making the characters capable of: behaving more naturally; interacting with real
users sharing a virtual experience with them; being more intuitively and extensively controllable for virtual worlds designers.
To meet our objectives, the CLIPE consortium gathers the main European actors in the field of VR/AR, computer graphics,
computer animation, psychology and perception. The project will expose young researchers to the state-of-the-art research
work in the areas, allowing them to develop character simulation techniques beyond the current frontiers, such as: machine
learning to provide characters with new abilities based on examples, procedural animation techniques to design large-scale
virtual population of characters, perceptual studies to evaluate character simulation quality and communication abilities.
CLIPE also extends its partnership to key industrial actors of populated virtual worlds, giving students the ability to explore
new application fields and start collaborations beyond academia. Finally, a thorough training program will equip the young researchers with many of the skills required to succeed in the very competitive industry/start-up world, if they decide to
venture there.
Fields of science
Keywords
Programme(s)
Coordinator
1678 Nicosia
Cyprus