A Survey on Realistic Virtual Human Animations: Definitions, Features and Evaluations

Abstract Generating realistic animated virtual humans is a problem that has been extensively studied with many applications in different types of virtual environments. However, the creation process of such realistic animations is challenging, especially because of the number and variety of influencing factors, that should then be identified and evaluated. In this paper, we attempt to provide a clearer understanding of how the multiple factors that have been studied in the literature impact the level of realism of animated virtual humans, by providing a survey of studies assessing their realism. This includes a review of features that have been manipulated to increase the realism of virtual humans, as well as evaluation approaches that have been developed. As the challenges of evaluating animated virtual humans in a way that agrees with human perception are still active research problems, this survey further identifies important open problems and directions for future research.