Components are highly parameterized for re-use between animals. Skin can be generated from the underlying parts, or a polygon mesh skin from elsewhere can be attached. Skin points are associated with their nearest underlying parts and move with them. When joints move, muscles automatically reshape and skin points initially move with their underlying parts. An iterative elastic relaxation results in a balanced skin mesh.
Deformable models are just a start.
We also need realistic joint motion. Studio motion capture provides detailed animation, but isn't appropriate for many situations, such as children playing in the surf, or cats hunting in the wild. We are exploring extraction of 3D motion from monocular digitized video sequences. Our long-term goal is to develop a movement library that encodes motion that can be resued in different environments and for different creatures. Next, we developed a model including all the movable vertebrate joints.