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Aprocedural animation is a type ofcomputer animation used to automatically generateanimation in real-time to allow for a more diverse series of actions than would otherwise be tedious using predefined animations.
Procedural animation is used to simulateparticle systems (smoke, fire, water[1][2]),cloth and clothing,rigid body dynamics, and hair and fur dynamics, as well as character animation.
Invideo games, it is often used for simple or complex actions such as turning a character's head whenever a player looks around (as inQuake III Arena) orragdoll physics, which is usually used for the death of a character in which the ragdoll will realistically fall to the floor. A ragdoll usually consists of a series of connectedrigid bodies that are programmed to haveNewtonian physics acting upon them; therefore, very realistic effects can be generated that would very hardly be possible with traditional animation. For example, a character can die slumped over a cliff and the weight of its upper-body can drag the rest of it over the edge.
Even more complex examples of procedural animation can be found in the gameSpore wherein user-created creatures will automatically be animated to all actions needed in the game from walking, to driving, to picking things up. In the gameUnreal Tournament 3, bodies who have gone into ragdoll mode to fake death can arise from any position into which they have fallen and get back on their feet. Thecanceled Indiana Jones game fromLucasArts shown atE3 2006 featured character motions that were animated entirely in real-time, with characters dodging, punching, and reacting to the environment based on an engine calledEuphoria byNaturalMotion, which has since been used in games such asGrand Theft Auto IV andBackbreaker.[citation needed]
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