[iva] Call for Submissions to IEEE VR 2025 Workshop on Next Generation Avatar (NGA2025)

[Ludovic Hoyet]

Dear colleagues, 





We are pleased to announce the first IEEE VR Workshop on "Next Generation Avatars", to be help during the IEEE VR 2025 conference, 8th March 2025 8:30-12:30, in Saint-Malo, France ( [ https://ieeevr.org/2025/ | https://ieeevr.org/2025/ ] ). 




NGA2025 is a half-day on-site workshop which focuses on the very last advancement in avatar capture, modeling, control, animation, interaction and user-studies, with interests also in ethical questions. 








NGA – Next Generation of Avatars MARCH 8th 2025, 8:30-12:30 


More details can be found here: [ https://project.inria.fr/nga2025/ | project.inria.fr/nga2025 ] 

Recent advances in deep learning, neural representations, and physics-based character simulation… have contributed to a breakthrough in avatar design, simulation, control and rendering. Computer vision now enables detailed and accurate pose and shape capture with affordable systems (e.g. a single RGB camera) in real-time, and to build controllable representations of specific users instead of anonymous virtual humans. In particular, advances in image-based rendering, such as NERF or Gaussian Splatting, also offer new challenges to control high quality avatars, opening new questions about avatar control, and its impact on human experience in VR. Novel view synthesis based on sparse views of the user may be a promising alternative to traditional character simulation, especially in teleoperation and telepresence applications, among many others. Furthermore, motion control including retargeting and interaction are still open and difficult problems, that may benefit from the above-mentioned new representations. How to retarget the motion of the user on an avatar simulated with these new representations? In traditional rendering pipelines, how to benefit from new information, such as the surface of the user, to adapt the pose of the avatar in real-time? Alternatively, how to control this avatar, with all the possible representations, using only a few sensors (e.g. controllers, inertial sensors…)? All these new possibilities may have various impacts on the user experience. How can new representations, new control metaphors or devices, and new ways of doing character simulation, enhance the VR experience of users? How can we evaluate these new methods to measure the degree of interaction, embodiment, agency, and impact? What are the potential risks and limitations of these approaches from the user perspective? The goal of the workshop is to discuss different aspects of the most recent works in this domain, and explore how it would impact future research in VR. After scientific presentations, showcasing the latest research advances in avatar representation, simulation and control, a round table will help to imagine the next generation of avatars, and their impact on user experience. 




We call for submissions of research papers and technical notes (4-8 pages) or position papers and work-in-progress research abstracts (2-3 pages) on the following topics: 

§ Avatar modeling, 

§ Avatar simulation, 

§ Avatar control, 

§ Avatar rendering, 

§ User experience with avatars, 

§ Interaction paradigms with avatars, 

§ Ethics, GDPR and regulations related to avatar use 




Accepted papers will be presented in scientific sessions, encouraging interaction with the audience (15 minutes talk + 15 minutes discussion) to help imagining the future trends of avatar modeling, representation, control and interaction. A round table composed of selected contributors will conclude the workshop: “Next Generation of Avatars: promises and limits”. 




All the submissions should follow the IEEE Computer Society VGTC conference format ( [ https://tc.computer.org/vgtc/publications/conference/ | https://tc.computer.org/vgtc/publications/conference/ ] ). Submissions must be camera-ready. NGA2025 uses double-blind reviewing, so please remove all personal data, such as author names and affiliation from all your submission files. 





Papers should be submitted thanks to the Easychair system: [ https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=nga2025 | https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=nga2025 ] 




Important dates: 

§ Submission deadline: January 10, 2025 

§ Notification: February 3, 2025 

§ Camera-ready deadline : February 21, 2025 

§ Workshop date : March 8th, 2025 8:30-12:30 





Organizers: 

§ Franck Multon , Inria, [ mailto:franck.multon at inria.fr | franck.multon at inria.fr ] (contact) 

§ Ludovic Hoyet, Inria, [ mailto:ludovic.hoyet at inria.fr | ludovic.hoyet at inria.fr ] 

§ Quentin Avril, InterDigital, [ mailto:Quentin.Avril at InterDigital.com | Quentin.Avril at InterDigital.com ] 

§ Victoria Fernández Abrevaya, Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems, [ mailto:victoria.abrevaya at tuebingen.mpg.de | victoria.abrevaya at tuebingen.mpg.de ] 

_____________________________ 
Ludovic Hoyet 
Chargé de Recherche, HDR 
Centre Inria de l'Université de Rennes 
Campus de Beaulieu, 263 Av. Général Leclerc, 35042 Rennes Cedex 
Tel: +33 2 99 84 25 21 
http://people.rennes.inria.fr/Ludovic.Hoyet/ 
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