Chapter 16 Personal Virtual Humans from Inhabiting the TalkZone to Populating the Digital Home

One of the fundamental goals of graphics has always been to visually create a three- dimensional person that is indistinguishable from a real person. This target is only slightly short of being reached, as was demonstrated when Columbia Pictures released Final Fantasy in 2001, an animated science fiction film with high- definition emotive characters. Through what has been a cultural and technological convergence, we are now starting to see software tools and techniques that can generate lifelike characters while not sacrificing the human judgement and artistic skills that are needed in character animation. Computer games, films, and the Internet are now starting to use virtual humans, which will become ever more realistic. However, a new challenge has been set people now do not want to just play a computer game with a visually realistic character or see a television programme with a vivid computer-generated character, they want to see themselves in that computer game or film.

The future is towards individuals having their own virtual clones, which they can utilise in computer-generated worlds and...