Modelling Life Through Time: Cultural Heritage Case Studies

This chapter describes how to create, animate and interact with virtual humans in the context of cultural heritage. Our case studies are previous European projects that our lab participated in, such as ERATO, LIFEPLUS, EPOCH and CALVIN. Our contribution to these projects was to show the state of the art of virtual humans and interactive applications. First we talk about modelling and how to generate avatar components (head, body and clothes) based on physic, spatial and external information: picture, 3D scans and measurements. Then we move on to the intangible part, where we explain how to capture and use motion to animate the avatar in various situations and semantic contexts, via different forms of gesture, expression and lip synchronization. Finally, we focus on the interaction loop between the detection of visitors and the reactions/expressions of the avatar, the dynamics and the integration of metadata such as pictures, storytelling and information that enrich user experience through an exhibition presented at the world’s biggest museum of computer science: Lady Ada.