Invited Lecture on Next generation Adaptive Believable Characters -- November 16th 2010

Date: November 16th 2010

Location: URJC, Campus de Móstoles, Departamental II, Salón de grados

Programme:

• 11:00 - 13:00: Next generation Adaptive Believable Characters (Magy Seif El-Nasr) [pdf]

Abstract:

• Next generation Adaptive Believable Characters

  Believable 3D articulate characters play an important role in many interactive entertainment productions, including computer and video games, interactive narratives, training simulations, and educational games. Most current industry methods rely on heavy scripting, where voice acted utterances, dialogue scripts, hand-coded or motion captured animation routines, and hard- coded rules of behaviors are used to portray the desired character. As one can imagine this kind of scripting is tedious and requires tremendous amount of time to produce. While scripting characters’ behaviors is a typical method, there has been a shift towards using AI techniques combined with animation to manipulate motion captured or hand coded motions, thus allowing characters to adapt based on environment, physics, or interaction. An exemplar game genre that made use of such algorithms is the Sports genre where movements of characters are modified dynamically to adapt better to the environment and interaction. However, few researchers investigated the development of adaptive expressive animated characters that can be used in other genres such as interactive narratives, RPG, or Action Adventure games. In this talk, I will discuss our current efforts to capture and develop expressive models, thus enabling expressive behaviors. This research effort is still ongoing; it combines both artistic exploration on expressive models, such as Laban or Delsarte, and the computational representation of such models through graphics and AI algorithms.

  Speaker: Magy Seif El-Nasr

  Magy Seif El-Nasr is currently an assistant Professor in the School of Interactive Arts and Technology at Simon Fraser University, where she directs the Engage Me In Interactive Experiences (EMIIE) Lab. She earned her Ph.D. degree from Northwestern University in Computer Science. Magy research focuses on enhancing game designs by developing tools and methods for evaluating and adapting game experiences. Her work is internationally known and cited in several game industry books, including Programming Believable Characters for Computer Games (Game Development Series) and Real-time Cinematography for Games. Magy is currently working on collaborative projects with Electronic Arts, Bardel Entertainment, and Pixel Ante. She received multiple grants in excess of $2M USD to support her research. She has published over 60 international peer reviewed articles on her work. In addition, her work has received several awards and recognition within the Game Industry and Interactive Narrative Communities. Notably, she received Best Paper Award at the International Conference of Virtual Storytelling 2003 and several citations in industry books and magazines. She is on the editorial board of the Journal of Game Development, the International Journal of Intelligent Games and Simulation, and ACM’s Computers in Entertainment; she has chaired and organized several workshops including, American Association of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI) Symposium on Artificial Intelligence and Interaction Entertainment, which became its own conference: AIIDE (Artificial Intelligence and Interactive Digital Entertainment).