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.
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.
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.
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.
We present Voice2Face: a Deep Learning model that generates face and tongue animations directly from recorded speech. Our approach consists of two steps: a conditional Variational Autoencoder ...generates mesh animations from speech, while a separate module maps the animations to rig controller space. Our contributions include an automated method for speech style control, a method to train a model with data from multiple quality levels, and a method for animating the tongue. Unlike previous works, our model generates animations without speaker‐dependent characteristics while allowing speech style control. We demonstrate through a user study that Voice2Face significantly outperforms a comparative state‐of‐the‐art model in terms of perceived animation quality, and our quantitative evaluation suggests that Voice2Face yields more accurate lip closure in speech with bilabials through our speech style optimization. Both evaluations also show that our data quality conditioning scheme outperforms both an unconditioned model and a model trained with a smaller high‐quality dataset. Finally, the user study shows a preference for animations including tongue. Results from our model can be seen at https://go.ea.com/voice2face.
Toy Story Smith, Susan; Brown, Noel; Summers, Sam
2017, 2018, 2018-01-25
eBook
Open access
Toy Story (John Lasseter, 1995), Pixar’s first feature-length production and Hollywood’s first completely computer-generated animated film, is an international cultural phenomenon. This collection ...brings together a diverse range of scholars and practitioners who together explore the themes, compositional techniques, cultural significance and industry legacy of this landmark in contemporary cinema. Topics range from industrial concerns, such as the film’s groundbreaking use of computer generated imagery and the establishment of Pixar as a major player in the animation world, to examinations of its music, aesthetics, and the role of toys in both the film and its fandom. The Toy Story franchise as a whole is also considered, with chapters looking at its cross-generational appeal and the experience of growing up alongside the series. As the first substantial work on this landmark film, this book will serve as an authoritative introduction for scholars, students and fans alike.
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