Some new challenging research topics in human animation

The paper aims at defining new challenging research topics related to human simulation and animation. Although virtual human modelling, animation and simulation aspects have now been widely studied, there remain many topics and applications that are still open for research. Among them, we propose a survey of the current status and the future directions of research topics and applications such as virtual cloning and population and crowd modelling, clothing simulation, communication and interaction with virtual humans thanks to emotional dialogue, avatars and autonomous virtual embodiments in an inhabited virtual environment for cultural heritage.