A Visual Language for Animated Simulation

This paper presents a visual language for producing animated simulations. The language is implemented on a tool called Tabajara Animator, using principles of Programming By Demonstration (PBD), which is a technique for teaching the computer new behaviour by demonstrating actions on concrete examples. The language is based on a formal model for concurrent update of agents, which represent the animated characters. The visual rules follow the "before-after" style, adopted by the most important similar tools. New features discussed by this work may produce a significant reduction on the number of required rules for producing animated simulations. This paper shows how these new features are implemented on a visual user-friendly interface, and how they are translated into structures of the formal model adopted.