The role of interoperability in virtual worlds, analysis of the specific cases of avatars
Résumé
In this paper we present current trends in several activities related to avatars. We provide a detailed survey of research literature for avatar appearance modeling, deformation control, and animation. We also introduce several standards, recommendations, and markup languages treating different aspects of avatars from visual representation to communication capabilities. Finally, we shortly introduce the current developments of MPEG-V related to avatars, a recent MPEG standard aiming to provide an interchange format for virtual worlds.