VAST - Vienna Animation Sytem Technology

VAST (Vienna Animation System Technology) is an animation system, that tries to integrate many existing animation techniques into one common system. The main concept of VAST is the actor - controller structure which provides a separation of static animation objects and dynamic animation tools to describe an animation. Message passing allows the communication between objects and provides a powerful tool for various kinds of animation. Interactive manipulation as well as scripting is provided to give the animator a convenient way to describe an animation. The object oriented design of the system and the separation of actors and controllers leads to a flexible implementation. Every object implements its functionality itself. Adding new functionality to the system is simply performed by implementing a new kind of object (actor or controller). So, when using the VAST system for research of a new animation tool, we can embed the new features into the so far implemented system, instead of building up a special animation system for the new technique.