Expressive Reproduced Characters for Games

Virtual tridimensional creatures are active actors in many types of games. Some of these games require, in addition to quantity, the simulation of kinship and evolution, not only of human character models but also of different types of animals, toon models or other creatures. Some applications also require interactions between isolated populations with well-defined ethnic characteristics. The identification of similar traits between individuals of the same family is crucial to providing increased realism. The main difficulty in these situations is to generate models automatically, in real time, which are physically similar to a given population or family. Another desirable feature is the automatic generation of facial expressions as the character interacts with the environment. In those cases, the difficulty lies in finding a simple mesh adaptation system for different creatures with big differences in shape. In this work, the reproduction of diploid beings is mimicked to produce character models that inherit genetic characteristics from their ancestors, with the possibility to map all genes identifying the origin of each gene, and apply custom facial expressions. With this solution it is possible to create interactive evolution and life-simulation games, genetic educational applications, and many other possibilities.