Recent advances on virtual human synthesis

Virtual human is a digital representation of the geometric and behavioral property of human beings in the virtual environment generated by computer. The research goal of virtual human synthesis is to generate realistic human bodymodels and natural human motion behavior. This paper introduces the development of the related researches on these two topics, and some progresses on example based human modeling and motion synthesis, and their applications in Chinese sign language teaching, computeraided sports training and public safety problem studying. Finally, some hot research topics in virtual human synthesis are presented. Supported partially by the National High-Tech Research & Development Program of China (Grant Nos. 2006AA01Z336, 2007AA01Z320), and the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 60533070)