The German Research Council (DFG) decided 1987 to establish a nationwide five year research project devoted to dynamics of multibody systems. In this project universities and research centers cooperated with the goal to develop a general pur pose multibody system software package. This concept provides the opportunity to use a modular structure of the software, i.e. different multibody formalisms may be combined with different simulation programmes via standardized interfaces. For the DFG project the database RSYST was chosen using standard FORTRAN 77 and an object oriented multibody system datamodel was defined. The project included • research on the fundamentals of the method of multibody systems, • concepts for new formalisms of dynamical analysis, • development of efficient numerical algorithms and • realization of a powerful software package of multibody systems. These goals required an interdisciplinary cooperation between mathematics, compu ter science, mechanics, and control theory. ix X After a rigorous reviewing process the following research institutions participated in the project (under the responsibility of leading scientists): Technical University of Aachen (Prof. G. Sedlacek) Technical University of Darmstadt (Prof. P. Hagedorn) University of Duisburg M. Hiller) (Prof.

This book presents the making of computer-generated films using three-dimensional synthetic actors. It is based mainly on the production of the film Rendez-vous a Montreal, an animated film that uses advanced computer techniques to achieve such effects as reincarnating film stars Humphrey Bogart and Marilyn Monroe. The main purpose of Rendez-vous a Montreal is to show that true synthetic actors can be created. This fllm represents a technological breakthrough which opens up new vistas in motion pictures, television, and advertising. With this technique, it will now be possible to produce short fllms or motion pictures featuring any celebrity in any situation. The book explains in detail how such a film can be produced using numerous drawings and color pictures. In particular, the following topics are presented: - Preparation of object construction: documentation search, and plaster models preparation - Object construction: digitizing and modeling - Body animation - Hand animation and object grasping - Facial animation: expressions, phonemes and emotions - Choreography: decors, actors, cameras, and lights - Realism: colors, lights, shading, shadows, and textures - Image recording: special effects Finally, an extensive appendix describes in detail the HUMAN FACTORY system.

Born after World War II, large-scale experimental high-energy physics (HEP) has found itself limited ever since by available accelerator, detector and computing technologies. Accordingly, HEP has made significant contributions to the development of these fields, more often than not driving their innovations. The invention of the World Wide Web at CERN is merely the best-known example out of many. This book is the first comprehensive account to trace the history of this pioneering spirit in the field of computing technologies. It covers everything up to and including the present-day handling of the huge demands imposed upon grid and distributed computing by full-scale LHC operations—operations which have for years involved many thousands of collaborating members worldwide and accordingly provide the original and natural testbed for grid computing concepts. This book takes the reader on a guided tour encompassing all relevant topics, including programming languages, software engineering, large databases, the Web, and grid- and cloud computing. The important issue of intellectual property regulations for distributed software engineering and computing is also addressed. Aptly, the book closes with a visionary chapter of what may lie ahead. Approachable and requiring only basic understanding of physics and computer sciences, this book is intended for both education and research.