For the first monthly meeting of the year 2002, we have two eye-catching presentations dedicated to the topic of Synthetic Characters. A technical presentation followed by an artistical one will take us into the universe of realistic synthetic characters. Do not miss these two incredible presentations!

Simulating long hair for 3D synthetic characters
Obtaining realistic hair movements is today one of the major remaining obstacles to animating high quality virtual humans. On average, 100 000 hairs grow on a human head, and the friction and collisions between individual hair strands have an important influence on the resulting motion of long hair. This explains in part the complexity of the problem of hair animation. Eric Plante, software developer at Discreet, will present the state of the research on this subject, along with his own results obtained at the computer graphics Lab of Université de Montréal and at Taarna Studios.

3D synthetic characters in Amazon Soul and Final Fantasy
René Morel will give us a glimpse of what's being built on top of existing 3D technology using commercial 3D tools. We will get a visually stunning tour of his current 3D production, Amazon Soul, his contribution to the feature film Final Fantasy and insight into the challenges and difficulties of putting it all together.