The Case for Physics Visualization in an Animator’s Toolset

Ari Shapiro, Andrew W. Feng

2013

Abstract

By associating physical properties with a digital character’s joint and bones, we are able to visualize explicitly a number of properties that can help animators develop high-quality animation. For example, proper ballistic arcs can be shown to demonstrate proper timing and location of a character during flight. In addition, a center of mass that accurately reflects the posture of the character can be shown to help with a balanced appearance during walking or running. In addition, motion properties not previously considered, such as angular momentum, can be easily identified when blatantly violated by an animator. However, very few inhouse or commercial system employ such tools, despite their nearly transparent use in an animator’s workflow and their utility in generating better-quality motion. In this paper, we argue the case for incorporating such toolset, describe an algorithm for implementing the tools, and detail that types of uses for such a tool.

References

  1. Coros, S., Karpathy, A., Jones, B., Reveret, L., and van de Panne, M. (2011). Locomotion skills for simulated quadrupeds. ACM Trans. Graph., 30(4):59:1-59:12.
  2. Jain, S., Ye, Y., and Liu, C. K. (2009). Optimization-based interactive motion synthesis. ACM Transaction on Graphics, 28(1):1-10.
  3. Levine, S., Wang, J. M., Haraux, A., Popovic, Z., and Koltun, V. (2012). Continuous character control with low-dimensional embeddings. ACM Transactions on Graphics, 31(4):28.
  4. Liu, C. K. (2009). Dextrous manipulation from a grasping pose. ACM Transactions on Graphics (SIGGRAPH), 28(3).
  5. McCann, J., Pollard, N., and Srinivasa, S. (2006). Physicsbased motion retiming. In Proceedings of the 2006 ACM SIGGRAPH/Eurographics symposium on Computer animation, pages 205-214. Eurographics Association.
  6. Mordatch, I., de Lasa, M., and Hertzmann, A. (2010). Robust physics-based locomotion using low-dimensional planning. ACM Trans. Graph., 29(4):71:1-71:8.
  7. Mordatch, I., Todorov, E., and Popovic, Z. (2012). Discovery of complex behaviors through contact-invariant optimization. ACM Trans. Graph., 31(4):43:1-43:8.
  8. Pollard, N. (1999). Simple machines for scaling human motion. In In Proceedings of Computer Animation and Simulation 7899.
  9. Popovic, J., Seitz, S. M., and Erdmann, M. (2003). Motion sketching for control of rigid-body simulations. ACM Trans. Graph., 22(4):1034-1054.
  10. Shapiro, A. and Lee, S.-H. (2011). Practical character physics for animators. Computer Graphics and Applications, IEEE, 31(4):45 -55.
  11. Wang, J. M., Fleet, D. J., and Hertzmann, A. (2008). Gaussian process dynamical models for human motion. IEEE Trans. Pattern Anal. Mach. Intell., 30(2):283- 298.
  12. Wang, J. M., Hamner, S. R., Delp, S. L., and Koltun, V. (2012). Optimizing locomotion controllers using biologically-based actuators and objectives. ACM Trans. Graph., 31(4):25:1-25:11.
  13. Williams, R. (2009). The Animator's Survival Kit-Revised Edition: A Manual of Methods, Principles and Formulas for Classical, Computer, Games, Stop Motion and Internet Animators. Faber & Faber, Inc.
  14. Ye, Y. and Liu, C. K. (2012). Synthesis of detailed hand manipulations using contact sampling. ACM Trans. Graph., 31(4):41:1-41:10.
Download


Paper Citation


in Harvard Style

Shapiro A. and W. Feng A. (2013). The Case for Physics Visualization in an Animator’s Toolset . In Proceedings of the International Conference on Computer Graphics Theory and Applications and International Conference on Information Visualization Theory and Applications - Volume 1: GRAPP, (VISIGRAPP 2013) ISBN 978-989-8565-46-4, pages 247-253. DOI: 10.5220/0004273702470253


in Bibtex Style

@conference{grapp13,
author={Ari Shapiro and Andrew W. Feng},
title={The Case for Physics Visualization in an Animator’s Toolset},
booktitle={Proceedings of the International Conference on Computer Graphics Theory and Applications and International Conference on Information Visualization Theory and Applications - Volume 1: GRAPP, (VISIGRAPP 2013)},
year={2013},
pages={247-253},
publisher={SciTePress},
organization={INSTICC},
doi={10.5220/0004273702470253},
isbn={978-989-8565-46-4},
}


in EndNote Style

TY - CONF
JO - Proceedings of the International Conference on Computer Graphics Theory and Applications and International Conference on Information Visualization Theory and Applications - Volume 1: GRAPP, (VISIGRAPP 2013)
TI - The Case for Physics Visualization in an Animator’s Toolset
SN - 978-989-8565-46-4
AU - Shapiro A.
AU - W. Feng A.
PY - 2013
SP - 247
EP - 253
DO - 10.5220/0004273702470253