Call for Papers
8th IEEE VR Internal Workshop on Animation in Virtual and Augmented Environments (ANIVAE-2025)
9.3.2025 in Saint-Malo, France, in conjunction with IEEE Virtual Reality 2025 (held on-site)
https://anivae.fhstp.ac.at

Description
Animation is a comprehensive and heterogeneous media form. Often associated with cinema and television, animated images have entered many areas of life, particularly games, installations, or data visualizations, taking on operative, communicative, epistemic, and didactic tasks, among other things. In this context, Suzanne Buchan (2013) speaks of pervasive animation, a media world in which animated images are omnipresent. In one of the most innovative fields of media production, augmented and virtual reality, animation is an integral part of artistic, scientific, and economic applications in animated forms as well as mixed with live-recorded footage. In both fields, generative AI is applied in various aspects of production. Within the animation process, it assists, for example, in story development and animatics, character design and animation, or virtual-scene creation. For AR/VR it is not only useful for procedural content creation but also enhances interactive and dynamic environments, scene and context understanding, and creates more complex avatars or non-player characters.
Connecting specialists from various digital humanities research areas (such as animation, games, and media studies) with experts from vision-oriented computer science areas (such as computer graphics, information visualization or AI) and experts from technically oriented computer science areas (such as data integration, internet of things, or smart automation), the ANIVAE workshops aim to create an open and exciting environment. By encouraging synergies of interdisciplinary approaches, the workshop maps animation within the AR/VR context from different angles and creates new knowledge in this research field.
ANIVAE wants to account for the state-of-the-art research in digital humanities with (software) design and visualization for AVR systems, to shape a common understanding, to compare systems and approaches and derive common paradigms, to develop useful and necessary methods and techniques, and to foster new ideas.

Topics of interest include (but are not limited to):

● Animated reality vs. mixed reality content
● Animation techniques in AR/VR environments
● Motion and/or performance capture
● Tactility and physicality of AR/VR
● Digital materiality in AR/VR

● Use cases and applications of animated content in AR/VR environments
● Tools/methods/use cases for interactive dissemination of animated AR/VR content
● User Acceptance of animated AR/VR contents

● Interdisciplinary and intermedia approaches
● Media art and AR/VR
● Animated hybrid documentaries in AR/VR
● AR/VR Narrative games and films
● AR/VR Data visualizations
● Interactivity and immersive play in extended reality (XR)
● Teaching and learning animation in VR

● Hardware/software support for animation in AR/VR
● New forms of AI storytelling in AR/VR
● Sound art and design in VR
● Generative AI in AR/VR
● AI workflows for AR/VR
● AI Avatars in AR/VR

Deadlines & Dates
Paper Submission Deadline: December 22, 2024
Notification of acceptance: January 7, 2025
Camera-ready Deadline: January 14, 2025
Workshop day: March 9, 2025

Contribution Formats
Following the last years, contributions are planned to be included and indexed in the IEEE digital library.
1. Research Papers (6–8 pages) Novel results in the field in the categories mentioned above related to VR/AR/XR/HCI development.
2. Short Papers (up to 4 pages) Preliminary results or work in progress.
3. State-of-the-Art Reports (6-8 pages) Surveys on the main results in this field, which will allow us to understand and compare achievements and approaches in tackling issues from the VR/AR/XR/HCI communities.
Papers must be written in English and follow the IEEE Computer Society format for VR Conference Papers described at: http://junctionpublishing.org/vgtc/Tasks/camera.html
All papers and camera-ready versions must be submitted electronically using the conference management tool found on the website: https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=anivae2025)
At least two program committee members will review submissions following a single-blind review process. Accepted papers will be given guidelines in preparing and submitting the final manuscript(s) together with the notification of acceptance.

Workshop Format
The ANIVAE workshop will be a half-day event. Accepted authors for the state-of-the-art descriptions and discussion essays will present their ideas in a panel-like format. Accepted contributions for research papers will be organized in sessions consisting of presentations and discussions.
During panels, we will encourage the active participation of the audience. We expect this structure to provide more focused discussions and a lively environment. Presenters will be asked to prepare a slide presentation of their accepted contribution. The general audience of this workshop will receive the workshop program with a set of questions in advance, which will guide the discussion in each panel.

Organizers
Thomas Moser (St. Pölten University of Applied Sciences), thomas.moser@fhstp.ac.at
Franziska Bruckner (St. Pölten University of Applied Sciences), franziska.bruckner@fhstp.ac.at
Juergen Hagler (University of Applied Sciences Upper Austria), juergen.hagler@fh-hagenberg.at

Program committee (preliminary)
Peter Chanthanakone, Zayed University, United Arab Emirates
Jeremiah Diephuis, University of Applied Sciences Upper Austria, Austria
Erwin Feyersinger, Eberhard Karls University, Tübingen
Chunning Maggie Guo, Renmin University of China, China
Max Hattler, City University of Hong Kong
Matthias Husinsky, St. Pölten University of Applied Sciences, Austria
Andreas Jakl, St. Pölten University of Applied Sciences, Austria
Michael Lankes, University of Applied Sciences Upper Austria, Austria
John Liu, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, US
Mohsen Moghaddam, Georgia Institute of Technology, US
Victor Adriel de Jesus Oliveira, St. Pölten University of Applied Sciences, Austria
Horst Orsolits, University of Applied Sciences Technikum Wien, Austria
Michael Reiner, International Management Center Krems, Austria
Lucas Schöffer, St. Pölten University of Applied Sciences, Austria
Pedro Serrazina, Universidade Lusófona de Lisboa, Portugal
Sabrina Sorko, FH Joanneum, Austria
Ana Stanescu, Graz University of Technology, Austria
Markus Tatzgern, University of Applied Sciences Salzburg, Austria
Vladimir Todorovic, University of Western Australia, Australia
Josef Wolfartsberger, University of Applied Sciences Upper Austria, Austria
Markus Wintersberger. St. Pölten University of Applied Sciences, Austria
Sang Ho Yoon, Korea Advanced Institute of Science & Technology, Korea