This volume contains research papers that were presented at the Sixth Eurographics Workshop on Animation and Simulation which took place at Maastricht, The Nether lands, September 2-3, 1995. A core area within computer graphics, animation is concerned with the computer synthesis of dynamic scenes. The creation of realistic animation based on the simulation of physical and biological phenomena is a unify ing and rapidly evolving research theme. This series of workshops, an activity of the Eurographics Working Group on Animation and Simulation, is an international forum where researchers representing the animation and simulation communities convene to exchange knowledge and experience related to this theme and to physics-based mod elling, human modelling, motion control, visualization, etc. Of keen interest at this sixth workshop were novel animation techniques and animation systems that simulate the dynamics and interactions of physical objects-solid, fluid, and gaseous-as well as the behaviors of living systems such as plants, lower animals, and humans. The workshop continued to promote the confluence of animation and simulation as a leading edge of computer graphics research that is providing animators with sophisticated new algorithms for synthesizing dynamic scenes. The call for extended abstracts for the workshop, issued in February 1995, elicited an enthusiastic response.

The area of computer graphics is characterized by rapid evolution. New techniques in hardware and software developments, e. g. , new rendering methods, have led to new ap plications and broader acceptance of graphics in fields such as scientific visualization, multi-media applications, computer aided design, and virtual reality systems. The evolving functionality and the growing complexity of graphics algorithms and sys tems make it more difficult for the application programmer to take full advantage of these systems. Conventional programming methods are no longer suited to manage the increasing complexity, so new programming paradigms and system architectures are re quired. One important step in this direction is the introduction and use of object-oriented methods. Intuition teils us that visible graphical entities are objects, and experience has indeed shown that object-oriented software techniques are quite useful for graphics. The expressiveness of object-oriented languages compared to pure procedurallanguages gives the graphics application programmer much better support when transforming his mental intentions into computer code. Moreover, object-oriented software development is a, weil founded technology, allowing software to be built from reusable and extensible compo nents. This book contains selected, reviewed and thoroughly revised vers ions of papers submit ted to and presented at the Fourth Eurographies Workshops on Object-Oriented Graphics, held on May 9-11, 1994 in Sintra, Portugal.

Background A group of UKexperts on Scientific Visualization and its associated applications gathered at The Cosener's House in Abingdon, Oxford shire (UK) in February 1991 to consider all aspects of scientific visualization and to produce a number of documents: • a detailed summary of current knowledge, techniques and appli cations in the field (this book); • an Introductory Guide to Visualization that could be widely dis tributed to the UK academic community as an encouragement to use visualization techniques and tools in their work; • a Management Report (to the UK Advisory Group On Computer Graphics - AGOCG) documenting the principal results of the workshop and making recommendations as appropriate. This book proposes a framework through which scientific visualiza tion systems may be understood and their capabilities described. It then provides overviews of the techniques, data facilities and human-computer interface that are required in a scientific visualiza tion system. The ways in which scientific visualization has been applied to a wide range of applications is reviewed and the available products that are scientific visualization systems or contribute to sci entific visualization systems are described. The book is completed by a comprehensive bibliography of literature relevant to scientific visualization and a glossary of terms. VI Scientific Visualization Acknowledgements This book was predominantly written during the workshop in Abingdon. The participants started from an "input document" pro duced by Ken Brodlie, Lesley Ann Carpenter, Rae Earnshaw, Julian Gallop (with Janet Haswell), Chris Osland and Peter Quarendon.

The 20 research papers in this volume demonstrate novel models and concepts in animation and graphics simulation. Special emphasis is given on innovative approaches to Modelling Human Motion, Models of Collision Detection and Perception, Facial Animation and Communication, Specific Animation Models, Realistic Rendering for Animation, and Behavioral Animation.