Recently many tools, including algorithms and systems, have made it easier to populate immersive virtual environments (VEs) with autonomous characters. Today it is common to explore virtual environments that can reach the size of an entire city that can be populated by many thousands of virtual characters. Through both invited and contributed presentations, we will:

• Present state of the art character and crowd animation techniques for interactive characters. Recent developments in character animation as well as crowd animation has impressively improved the level of quality for motions, as well as computational performances. One objective of the workshop is to present how VR and immersive environments can benefit from these recent developments

• Present some examples of new research opportunities by the availability of populated virtual environment. Populating VEs with several autonomous characters is a relatively recent advancement. What research can benefit from such capability? Our call for contributions to the workshop will explore this question. We see possibilities for socio-psychology research on crowd behaviors or treatment of social phobia. We expect presentations related to how recent technological progresses enable or facilitated such research.

• Present new research on avatars. The user is able to move and interact with virtual humans but what is the best way to represent the user to improve its experience in the virtual environment?

• Discuss technological requirements for future applications. Recent technologies and software have clearly eased the creation of populated immersive VEs. One final objective of the workshop is to gather the requirements of current users of these technologies for future applications. Do they expect better animation quality? Better rendering? Or, higher level of autonomy? What kind interactivity is expected with autonomous characters?

Finally, we expect that the workshop will provide an opportunity for researchers to develop new techniques for virtual humans and crowd, and possibly lead to new collaboration.