Procedural animation

Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

A procedural animation is a type of

animation
in real-time to allow for a more diverse series of actions than would otherwise be tedious using predefined animations.

Example of procedural animation
System Dynamics
software.

Procedural animation is used to simulate particle systems (smoke, fire, water[1][2]), cloth and clothing, rigid body dynamics, and hair and fur dynamics, as well as character animation.

In video games, it is often used for simple or complex actions such as turning a character's head whenever a player looks around (as in Quake III Arena) or ragdoll physics, which is usually used for 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 very hardly be possible with traditional animation. For example, a character can die slumped over a cliff and the weight of its upper-body can drag the rest of it over the edge.

Even more complex examples of procedural animation can be found in the game

Euphoria by NaturalMotion which has since been used in games such as Grand Theft Auto IV and Backbreaker.[citation needed
]

See also

References