Abstract: We present a new approach to realtime character animation with interactive control. Given a corpus of motion capture data and a desired task, we automatically compute near-optimal controllers using a low-dimensional basis representation. We show that these controllers produce motion that fluidly responds to several dimensions of user control and environmental constraints in realtime. Our results indicate that very few basis functions are required to create high-fidelity character controllers which permit complex user navigation and obstacle-avoidance tasks.