Section: Overall Objectives

Introduction

Since its creation in 2004, the EVASION project-team has focused on modeling, animation, visualization and rendering of natural scenes and phenomena. This was organized in three main scientific objectives: (1) creation of digital content; (2) animating nature; and (3) efficient visualization of very large scenes. In 2011, the team was re-organized to prepare the transition to a new research agenda on Intuitive Modeling and Animation for Interactive Graphics & Narrative Environments (IMAGINE). As a consequence, the first two scientific objectives of EVASION have been intensified and refocused, and the third scientific objective has been discontinued.

Our new research objectives are now best described with the three following items:

• Shape design: We aim to create intuitive tools for designing and editing 3D shapes, from arbitrary ones to shapes that obey application-dependent constraints (such as, for instance, being developable, to model virtual objects made of cloth or of paper). This is a continuation of our earlier work on the creation of digital content, with a much broader field of application that now includes both natural contents such as anatomic structures [10] , landscapes and mountains [30] , [17] and man-made contents such as garments, villages and mechanical assemblies [7] , [23] .

• Motion synthesis: Our goal is to design methods to convey and control real-time 3D motion and deformation, from motion of passive objects, materials or mechanisms to plausible animation of virtual creatures. This is a continuation of our earlier work on animating nature, again with a much broader field of application that now includes both natural physical motion  [3] , [4] , [6] , [16] , [29] , [27] , mechanical motion [7] and high-level character motion [1] , [13] .

• Narrative design: Lastly, we are starting a new activity focusing on designing narrative content (stories) for virtual creatures and cameras on virtual stages. This new research direction includes work on semantic annotation of virtual worlds [9] , [10] , [23] , [25] and automatic reasoning for virtual cinematography [31] , [21] , and is expected to evolve towards authoring tools for storyboarding and directing scenario-based dynamic scenes.