THE next time you see an action movie, look closely at the actors performing
the death-defying stunts—they may not be real. Virtual stunt artists are
being developed that could ultimately leave the genuine article looking for a
new career.
Unlike previous computer-generated characters, which have to be laboriously
generated frame by frame, these virtual actors respond to the physics of the
real world thanks to the use of a novel array of virtual “sensors”.
Computer-based stunt artists should eventually replace nearly all real-life
ones, says the system’s developer Petros Faloutsos, now based at the University
of California in Los…
