There are also procedural animation techniques, where you have a fixed skeleton and you are trying to find an animation that satisfies user-specified constraints, but that is really more of a motion-control topic.
I recall a professor of mine saying that Karl Sims's project is a popular choice for a final project in his advanced graphics course, but he tries to discourage it, as it turns out to be deceptively difficult to implement in a semester, even for particularly capable students.
The guys working on EA's Spore considered evolving their creature animations, but opted instead for retargeted animation generated by hand. http://forum.spore.com/jforum/posts/list/28338.page
There are also procedural animation techniques, where you have a fixed skeleton and you are trying to find an animation that satisfies user-specified constraints, but that is really more of a motion-control topic.
I recall a professor of mine saying that Karl Sims's project is a popular choice for a final project in his advanced graphics course, but he tries to discourage it, as it turns out to be deceptively difficult to implement in a semester, even for particularly capable students.