Simulating and animating social dynamics: embedding small pedestrian groups in crowds

We present a crowd model informed by common ground theory to accommodate high-level socially aware behavioral realism of characters in crowd simulations. In our approach, group members maintain group cohesiveness by communicating and adapting their behaviors to each other. The resulting character behaviors in animations form a consequential chain interpreted as a coherent story by observers. We demonstrate that our model produces more believable animations from the viewpoint of human observers through a series of user studies. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.