Charisma

The MPEG-4 standards define a technique for 3D facial and body model animations (FAPS/BAPS respectively), as seen in animation systems such as Greta. The way this technique works is in contrast to the set of animation techniques currently used within modern games technologies and applications, which utilize more advanced, expressive animation systems such as Skeletal, Morph Target, and Inverse Kinematics. This article describes an object-oriented, Java-based framework for the integration and transformation of MPEG4 standards-compliant animation streams known as Charisma. Charisma is designed for use with modern games animation systems; this article illustrates the application of this framework on top of our Java/OpenGL-based games engine framework known as Homura.