Games - Procedural animation

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	Games - Procedural animation

A procedural animation is a method often used in computer and video games to automatically generate animation in real-time to allow for a more diverse series of actions than could otherwise be created by artists. It is often used for simple things like turning a character's head when a player looks around (as in Quake III Arena) and more complex things like ragdoll which will replace an animated character or object, when a certain event occurs, with a ragdoll that looks identical to the object but behaves more realistically. This can be used for events like the death of a character in which the ragdoll will realistically fall to the floor. A ragdoll usually consists of a series of connected rigid bodies that are programmed to have Newtonian physics acting upon them; therefore, very realistic effects can be generated that would never be possible with traditional animation. For example, a character can die slumped over a fence and the weight of it's upper-body can drag the rest of it over the edge.

Even more complex examples of procedural animation can be found in the upcoming game Spore
wherein user-created creatures will automatically be animated to all actions needed in the game from walking, to driving, to picking things up. In the upcoming game Unreal Tournament 2007 bodies who have gone into ragdoll mode to fake death can arise from any position they have fallen and get back on their feet.

[ Visit the complete Wikipedia entry for Procedural animation ]

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