Why are there animators on AI teams? Isn't there an animation team?
TL;DRCharlton says AI animators build the flows for interactable objects like a coffee machine, so AI characters perform tasks such as a bartender making drinks with authentic, realistic animation.
One reason is because one thing that I work on a lot as well is these things called usables. And a usable is a thing that somebody can interact with, like a coffee machine. So I'll go out there and do the research on how to use a coffee machine and put together sort of a flow. Luckily, I drink coffee a lot, just using that as an example. But I'll go out and videotape myself using my coffee machine and put it together as what people would call a state machine, or some people may refer to as a flow graph. And it would basically explain a flow of how to use that usable, the coffee machine. And by doing that, we maintain a sense of realism, performance, and just adding more to that expanding universe.
An AI that knows when to trigger what animation based on what it's trying to do.
Yeah. For example, a bartender knowing how to make a highball, knowing how to get a smalls glass, knowing how to make all the different drinks. So yeah, all of those different things, they all require different performances. And so I'm in charge of making sure that performance is authentic.