Introduction to Animation

SCI199Y, Fall 2010 Eugene Fiume University of Toronto

Thanks to Prof. Aaron Hertzmann

There is no particular mystery in animation... it's really very simple, and like anything that is simple, it is about the hardest thing in the world to do. Bill Tytla at the Walt Disney Studio, June 28, 1937

What is this?

(Johansson 1973)

See:
http://www.biomotionlab.ca and especially http://www.biomotionlab.ca/Demos/ BMLwalker.html

Look at how we perceive human motion.

Motion conveys
identity character gender mood intention emotion

What is a movie?
A sequence of frames
24 frames per second (video) 30 frames per second (film)

Parameterizing motion
Degrees-of-freedom (DOFs)
vector q defines pose can be anything (position, shape, colour, ...) function of time: q(t) for t=t1 to tend render(q(t))

Animation techniques
User-driven
Keyframing Inverse Kinematics and Inverse Dynamics Motion capture

Procedural animation
Physical simulation Particle systems Crowd behaviours

Data-driven animation

Keyframe animation

q1

q2

q3

q(t)

q(t)
http://www.cadtutor.net/dd/bryce/anim/anim.html

Keyframe animation
Define a set of key poses: [q1,,qT] Interpolate to produce q(t)
Join successive poses by lines or curves

Summary of Keyframing
Pros:
Very expressive. Total control to the artist. Still the technique of choice for most animators.

Cons:
Very labour intensive. Hard to create physical realism.

Uses:
Potentially everthing except complex physical phenomena (e.g., smoke).

Motion capture

[Images from NYU and UW]

Motion capture

[Images from NYU and UW]

Motion capture

See the end

Motion capture

Mocap is not a panacea

Pros and cons of motion capture

Pros:
Captures specific style of real people.

Cons:
Often not expressive enough. Why? Time-consuming and expensive. Lots of equipment, space, actors. Manual clean-up. Hard to edit.

Uses:
Character animation. Medicine (kinesiology, biomechanics).

Physical simulation
Simulate dynamics of the real world Newtons second law:

F = ma
force mass acceleration

Approach: Compute x(t) by numerical integration

Examples of Simulations
watery and smoky dudes nifty smoke plumes more natural phenomena rigid fluids You can pour yourself a cool glass of water! and make it splash

Pros and cons of simulation

Pros:
Very realistic motion.

Cons:
Very slow. Very hard to control. Not expressive.

Uses:
Complex physical phenomena. Special effects.

Particle systems
Fake passive dynamics Lots of particles, randomly created

Crowd behaviours
Particles with behavior

Crowd behaviors

Behavioural animation
Write programs that control characters

Data-driven animation
Video textures

Pros and cons of data-driven animation

Pros:
potentially best of all worlds:
captures specific style of real actors very flexible can generate new motion in real-time

Cons:
requires good data (possibly lots of it)

Uses:
character animation

Control
use some approach to move or guide an object to some goal. inverse kinematics/dynamics to work backward from the goal. hand-tuned controller applied to object. control theory to search for a way to move an object. curse of dimensionality think about exponential systems.