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Mixed Reality and Gamification for Cultural Heritage pp 333–357Cite as

Gamified AR/VR Character Rendering and Animation-Enabling Technologies

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Abstract

In recent years, the popularity of mixed reality (MR) environments has increased as they provide attractive and immersive experiences for educational, entertainment, and training purposes. The increasing advances of Augmented Reality (AR) and Virtual Reality (VR) hardware and software technologies also constitute an interesting area of research. In this work, we present the main pipeline followed for creating virtual character-based AR experiences, specifically in cultural heritage environments. Our main goal in this chapter is to compare different software methodologies for creating VR environments and present a complete novel methodology for authoring life-sized AR virtual characters and life-sized AR crowd simulation using only modern mobile devices. One important aspect of these environments that we focus on is creating realistic and interactive virtual characters via procedurally generated body and facial animations which are illuminated with real environment light. Virtual characters' transformations are handled efficiently using a single mathematical framework, the 3D Euclidean geometric algebra (GA), and the conformal geometric algebra (CGA) which is able to handle translations, rotations, and dilations. Using such a single algebraic framework, we avoid conversions between different mathematical representations; as a result, we achieve more efficient performance. We also compare the efficiency of different GA code generators—(a) the Gaigen library, (b) libvsr, and (c) Gaalop—so that a future user of GA can choose the most appropriate, currently available s/w library that will provide the most optimal and efficient results. Our main research involves the following questions: (a) Are novel, low-cost, modern HMDs suitable as VR platforms? (b) Which are the most appropriate s/w platforms needed to realize such VR digital heritage gamified experiences? (c) Can we achieve more efficient AR scene authoring? (d) Can we achieve more efficient AR animation interpolation and skinning using a single mathematical framework employing GA?

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Acknowledgments

The research leading to these results has received funding from the European Union People Programme (FP7-PEOPLE-2013-ITN) under grant agreement nr. 608013.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Computer Science, Foundation for Research and Technology—Hellas, 100 N. Plastira Str., 70013, Heraklion, Greece

    Margarita Papaefthymiou, Steve Kateros, Stylianos Georgiou, Nikos Lydatakis, Paul Zikas, Vasileios Bachlitzanakis & George Papagiannakis

  2. Department of Computer Science, University of Crete, Voutes Campus, 70013, Heraklion, Greece

    Margarita Papaefthymiou, Steve Kateros, Stylianos Georgiou, Nikos Lydatakis, Paul Zikas, Vasileios Bachlitzanakis & George Papagiannakis

Authors
  1. Margarita Papaefthymiou
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  2. Steve Kateros
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  3. Stylianos Georgiou
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  4. Nikos Lydatakis
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  5. Paul Zikas
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  6. Vasileios Bachlitzanakis
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  7. George Papagiannakis
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Margarita Papaefthymiou .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Digital Heritage Research, Cyprus University of Technology Digital Heritage Research, Limassol, Cyprus

    Marinos Ioannides

  2. University of Geneva , Carouge, Switzerland

    Nadia Magnenat-Thalmann

  3. Department of Computer Science, University of Crete & FORTH Department of Computer Science, Heraklion, Greece

    George Papagiannakis

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Papaefthymiou, M. et al. (2017). Gamified AR/VR Character Rendering and Animation-Enabling Technologies. In: Ioannides, M., Magnenat-Thalmann, N., Papagiannakis, G. (eds) Mixed Reality and Gamification for Cultural Heritage. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-49607-8_13

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-49607-8_13

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-49606-1

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-49607-8

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

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