Norman I. Badler – författare

This book provides a deep understanding of state-of-art methods for simulation of heterogeneous crowds in computer graphics. It will cover different aspects that are necessary to achieve plausible crowd behaviors. The book will be a review of the most recent literature in this field that can help professionals and graduate students interested in this field to get up to date with the latest contributions, and open problems for their possible future research. The chapter contributors are well known researchers and practitioners in the field and they include their latest contributions in the different topics required to achieve believable heterogeneous crowd simulation.

This book tells the story of building digital virtual human models in the context of the background, choices, and occurrences that shaped the author''s own involvement and personal evolution. Such digital models found motivating applications in engineering, anthropology, medical, and group simulation problems, and numerous connections to other disciplines informed and enriched their design, development, and deployment. This personal perspective on developments in the field is enhanced by extensive citations that provide pointers into relevant literature, recognize the contributions of co-authors and collaborators, and give external evidence for claims. Both academic and corporate interest in virtual beings has exploded in recent years, and while this book does not survey the current state of the art it is an essential window into how the field arrived where it is today. The technical discussions throughout the book are deliberately accessible with extensive references to the literature for further reading. This book will be of interest to readers who want to understand the history of virtual human beings, how they evolved, and especially how they must address numerous human characteristics to achieve any sense of "human-ness."