Fragment shaders for agent animation using finite state machines. Simulation Modelling Prac.pdfVIP

Simulation Modelling Practice and Theory 13 (2005) 741–751 /locate/simpat Fragment shaders for agent animation using finite state machines ´ * ´ ´ ´ Isaac Rudomın , Erik Millan, Benjamın Hernandez ´ ´ Instituto Tecnologico y de Estudios Superiores Monterrey, Campus Estado de Mexico, Monterrey, Mexico Abstract In a previous paper we generated animated agents and their behavior using a combination of XML and images. The behavior of agents was specified as a finite state machine (FSM) in XML. We used images to determine properties of the world that agents react to. While this a roach is very flexible, it can be made much faster by using the power available in modern GPUs. In this paper we implement FSMs as fragment shaders using three kinds of images: world space images, agent space images and FSM table images. We show a simple example and compare performance of CPU and GPU implementations. Then we examine a more com- plex example involving more maps and two types of agents (predator–prey). Furthermore we explore how to render agents in 3D more efficiently by using a variation on pseudoinstancing. 2005 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. Keywords: FSM-based simulations; Virtual characters; GPU; Shader; Maps; Crowds; Behavior simula- tion; Finite state machine * Corresponding author. ´ ´ E-mail addresses: rudomin@itesm.mx (I. Rudomın), emillan@itesm.mx (E. Millan), hbenjamin@ ´ itesm.mx (B. Hernandez).