Will Digital Actors Need Agents?

       Michael Cohen
     Microsoft Research

     WB 116, 4pm Thursday November 19 
  (Please note the unusual time and day)

In this talk I will discuss the possibility that we will soon see virtual
actors that are indistiguishable from real human actors. Most of the talk
will be devoted to examining the state-of-the art in the many technologies
required to make this come true. I will concentrate primarily on the work
going on in the Graphics Group at Microsoft Research but will also touch on
some of the relevant work going on elsewhere. In particular, work on facial
modeling, character animation, and camera control will be highlighted. The
talk will close with some speculation about how we will be interacting with
others and with our computers in the not-too-distant future.

Michael Cohen has undergraduate degrees in Art 
and Civil Engineering, an MS degree in Computer
Graphics from Cornell and a Ph.D. degree
in Computer Science from Utah. He taught at
Cornell, Utah, and Princeton before accepting
his current position at Microsoft.  He has
made contributions in many areas of graphics. 
His work in radiosity culminated in the publication
of a book, with John Wallace, titled "Radiosity
and Realistic Image Synthesis". He was recently
awarded the 1998 ACM SIGGRAPH Computer Graphics
Achievement Award.