We present in this paper an image-based rendering technique to represent virtual humans in real-time. Though we deal only with virtual humans, the concept can be applied to any articulated character. Our technique is termed animated impostors because it extends the notion of dynamic impostors to take into account changes in the character's appearance. We also show how impostors can be embedded into large-scale simulations/applications.

Keywords: virtual humans, impostors, LOD, sprites, image-based rendering