Driven by demand from the entertainment industry for better and more realistic animation, technology continues to evolve and improve. The algorithms and techniques behind this technology are the ...foundation of this comprehensive book, which is written to teach you the fundamentals of animation programming. In this third edition, the most current techniques are covered along with the theory and high-level computation that have earned the book a reputation as the best technically-oriented animation resource. Key topics such as fluids, hair, and crowd animation have been expanded, and extensive new coverage of clothes and cloth has been added. New material on simulation provides a more diverse look at this important area and more example animations and chapter projects and exercises are included. Additionally, spline coverage has been expanded and new video compression and formats (e.g., iTunes) are covered.
* Includes companion site with contemporary animation examples drawn from research and entertainment, sample animations, and example code * Describes the key mathematical and algorithmic foundations of animation that provide you with a deep understanding and control of technique * Expanded and new coverage of key topics including: fluids and clouds, cloth and clothes, hair, and crowd animation * Explains the algorithms used for path following, hierarchical kinematic modelling, rigid body dynamics, flocking behaviour, particle systems, collision detection, and more
Computer graphics (or CG) has changed the way we experience the art of moving images. Computer graphics is the difference between Steamboat Willie and Buzz Lightyear, between ping pong and PONG. It ...began in 1963 when an MIT graduate student named Ivan Sutherland created the first true computer animation program. Instead of presenting a series of numbers, Sutherland's Sketchpad program drew lines that created recognizable images. Sutherland noted: "Since motion can be put into Sketchpad drawings, it might be exciting to try making cartoons." This book, the first full-length history of CG, shows us how Sutherland's seemingly offhand idea grew into a multibillion dollar industry. In Moving Innovation, Tom Sito -- himself an animator and industry insider for more than thirty years -- describes the evolution of CG. The history of traditional cinema technology is a fairly straight path from Lumière to MGM. Writing the history of CG, Sito maps simultaneous accomplishments in multiple locales -- academia, the military-industrial complex, movie special effects, video games, experimental film, corporate research, and commercial animation. His story features a memorable cast of characters -- math nerds, avant-garde artists, cold warriors, hippies, video game enthusiasts, and studio executives: disparate types united by a common vision. Computer animation did not begin just with Pixar; Sito shows us how fifty years of work by this motley crew made movies like Toy Story and Avatar possible.
Current global trends have proved the creative industry to be one of the important sources of economic growth among developed countries. Creativity and its importance for Malaysia have made it ...imperative for any business organization to use creativity in a range of ways including multimedia content and animation. Malaysian animation viewers are rapidly influenced by digital media entertainment. The rise of such entertainment tends to drive them away from understanding what lies behind it that affect their emotion and thoughts. Therefore, the focus of this paper is to look into the experiences of “pleasantness” in viewer’s emotions that stimulate the perception of pleasure when watching Malaysian animated cartoon characters. A descriptive and One-Way Anova will be implemented in this study to examine the design aesthetics and perception from the animation viewers that affects the psychological experiences in emotions that determines the pleasantness feeling. Overall, the results indicate that perceived pleasantness on Malaysian animated cartoon characters did not differ between age and gender. We believe this finding will benefit the creative content creators and help them to understand more about local animation viewers.
L’any 1950 es tanca l’edat d’or dels dibuixos animats a Barcelona i Espanya amb un llargmetratge atípic que reuneix a destacades personalitats del moment. En aquest treball s’analitza què van aportar ...els seus creadors al film i què va significar aquest dins de la seva trajectòria creativa i vital. El treball acaba demostrant que l’atipicitat d’aquest film d’animació és fruit de la marcada personalitat dels quatre principals membres que els van dur a terme.
L'animació des dels seus orígens s'ha sabut acoblar a diversos públics a través de diferents manifestacions humanes. Aquestes han fet sorgir possibilitats mai abans imaginades, que fan d'aquest ...llenguatge un atraient recurs per indagar. En aquest sentit, es pretén propiciar un espai de reflexió a través de la discussió de conceptes i postures que van des de la gènesi de la imatge estàtica fins a l'evolució d'una imatge en moviment i la seva dialèctica entre el real i l'irreal. Per aquest motiu, es considera adequat promoure i brindar bases per reflexions enfocades a la imatge en moviment.
Automatic synthesis of realistic gestures promises to transform the fields of animation, avatars and communicative agents. In off‐line applications, novel tools can alter the role of an animator to ...that of a director, who provides only high‐level input for the desired animation; a learned network then translates these instructions into an appropriate sequence of body poses. In interactive scenarios, systems for generating natural animations on the fly are key to achieving believable and relatable characters. In this paper we address some of the core issues towards these ends. By adapting a deep learning‐based motion synthesis method called MoGlow, we propose a new generative model for generating state‐of‐the‐art realistic speech‐driven gesticulation. Owing to the probabilistic nature of the approach, our model can produce a battery of different, yet plausible, gestures given the same input speech signal. Just like humans, this gives a rich natural variation of motion. We additionally demonstrate the ability to exert directorial control over the output style, such as gesture level, speed, symmetry and spacial extent. Such control can be leveraged to convey a desired character personality or mood. We achieve all this without any manual annotation of the data. User studies evaluating upper‐body gesticulation confirm that the generated motions are natural and well match the input speech. Our method scores above all prior systems and baselines on these measures, and comes close to the ratings of the original recorded motions. We furthermore find that we can accurately control gesticulation styles without unnecessarily compromising perceived naturalness. Finally, we also demonstrate an application of the same method to full‐body gesticulation, including the synthesis of stepping motion and stance.
Virtualized traffic via various simulation models and real‐world traffic data are promising approaches to reconstruct detailed traffic flows. A variety of applications can benefit from the virtual ...traffic, including, but not limited to, video games, virtual reality, traffic engineering and autonomous driving. In this survey, we provide a comprehensive review on the state‐of‐the‐art techniques for traffic simulation and animation. We start with a discussion on three classes of traffic simulation models applied at different levels of detail. Then, we introduce various data‐driven animation techniques, including existing data collection methods, and the validation and evaluation of simulated traffic flows. Next, we discuss how traffic simulations can benefit the training and testing of autonomous vehicles. Finally, we discuss the current states of traffic simulation and animation and suggest future research directions.
Virtualized traffic via various simulation models and real‐world traffic data are promising approaches to reconstruct detailed traffic flows. A variety of applications can benefit from the virtual traffic, including, but not limited to, video games, virtual reality, traffic engineering and autonomous driving. In this survey, we provide a comprehensive review on the state‐of‐the‐art techniques for traffic simulation and animation. We start with a discussion on three classes of traffic simulation models applied at different levels of detail. Then, we introduce various data‐driven animation techniques, including existing data collection methods, and the validation and evaluation of simulated traffic flows. Next, we discuss how traffic simulations can benefit the training and testing of autonomous vehicles.
We propose a design framework to assist with user‐generated content in facial animation — without requiring any animation experience or ground truth reference. Where conventional prototyping methods ...rely on handcrafting by experienced animators, our approach looks to encode the role of the animator as an Evolutionary Algorithm acting on animation controls, driven by visual feedback from a user. Presented as a simple interface, users sample control combinations and select favourable results to influence later sampling. Over multiple iterations of disregarding unfavourable control values, parameters converge towards the user's ideal. We demonstrate our framework through two non‐trivial applications: creating highly nuanced expressions by evolving control values of a face rig and non‐linear motion through evolving control point positions of animation curves.
We propose a design framework to assist with user‐generated content in facial animation — without requiring any animation experience or ground truth reference. Where conventional prototyping methods rely on handcrafting by experienced animators, our approach looks to encode the role of the animator as an Evolutionary Algorithm acting on animation controls, driven by visual feedback from a user. Presented as a simple interface, users sample control combinations and select favourable results to influence later sampling. Over multiple iterations of disregarding unfavourable control values, parameters converge towards the user's ideal. We demonstrate our framework through two non‐trivial applications: creating highly nuanced expressions by evolving control values of a face rig and non‐linear motion through evolving control point positions of animation curves.
This paper presents a system for performance-based character animation that enables any user to control the facial expressions of a digital avatar in realtime. The user is recorded in a natural ...environment using a non-intrusive, commercially available 3D sensor. The simplicity of this acquisition device comes at the cost of high noise levels in the acquired data. To effectively map low-quality 2D images and 3D depth maps to realistic facial expressions, we introduce a novel face tracking algorithm that combines geometry and texture registration with pre-recorded animation priors in a single optimization. Formulated as a maximum a posteriori estimation in a reduced parameter space, our method implicitly exploits temporal coherence to stabilize the tracking. We demonstrate that compelling 3D facial dynamics can be reconstructed in realtime without the use of face markers, intrusive lighting, or complex scanning hardware. This makes our system easy to deploy and facilitates a range of new applications, e.g. in digital gameplay or social interactions.
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