Abstract
This paper presents a layered animation framework which uses displacement maps for efficient representation and animation of highly detailed surfaces. The model consists of three layers: a skeleton; low-resolution control model; and a displacement map image. The novel aspects of this approach are an automatic closed-form solution for displacement map generation and animation of the layered displacement map model. This approach provides an efficient representation of complex geometry which allows realistic deformable animation with multiple levels-of-detail. The representation enables compression, efficient transmission and level-of-detail control for animated models.