This course will explore computational techniques for animating computer-generated characters in games, virtual worlds, movies, and other applications. The first part of the course will cover basic techniques. The second part will be devoted to reading, analyzing, and discussing research publications in character animation, with an eye towards open problems.
| Week | Class Days | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Week 1 | April 1st | Introduction |
| Week 2 | April 6th and 8th | Keyframing, interpolation, re-parameterization, quaternions |
| Week 3 | April 13th and 15th | Linked structures, forward kinematics, inverse kinematics |
| Week 4 | April 20th and 22nd | Motion capture: acquisition and processing |
| Week 8 | April 27th and 29th | Current research topics |
| Week 5 | May 4th and 6th | Rigid body dynamics |
| Week 6 | May 11th and 13th | Current research topics |
| Week 9 | May 18th and 20th | Current research topics |
| Week 10 | May 27th | Current research topics |
| Week 11 | June 1st and 3rd | Guest lectures from Larry Cutler and Jason Schleifer, PDI/Dreamworks |
| Week | Description |
|---|---|
| Week 1 | Course Overview |
| Week 2 | Keyframing |
| Week 2 | Animating Orientation |
| Week 3 | Kinematics |
| Week 4 | Motion Capture |
| Class | Description |
|---|---|
| Monday, April 6th | Optional: DeRose and Barsky, Geometric continuity, shape parameters, and geometric constructions for Catmull-Rom splines, TOG 1988 |
| Wednesday, April 8th | Optional: Shoemake, Animating rotation with quaternion curves, SIGGRAPH 1985 |
| Wednesday, April 15th | Optional: Girard and Maciejewski, Computational modeling for the computer animation of legged figures, SIGGRAPH 1985 |
| Monday, April 27th | Required: Lasseter, Principles of traditional animation applied to 3D computer animation, SIGGRAPH 1987 Required: Witkin and Popovic, Motion warping, SIGGRAPH 1995 |
| Wednesday, April 29th | Required: Bruderlin and Williams, Motion signal processing, SIGGRAPH 1995 |
| Wednesday, May 6th | Required: Raibert and Hodgins, Animation of dynamic legged locomotion, SIGGRAPH 1991 Required: Hodgins et al., Animating human athletics, SIGGRAPH 1995 |
| Monday, May 11th | Required: Witkin and Kass, Spacetime constraints, SIGGRAPH 1988 |
| Wednesday, May 13th | Required: van de Panne et al., Reusable motion synthesis using state-space controllers, SIGGRAPH 1990 |
| Monday, May 18th | Required: Gleicher, Motion editing with spacetime constraints, I3D 1997 Required: Gleicher, Retargeting motion to new characters, SIGGRAPH 1998 |
| Wednesday, May 20th | Required: Rose et al., Verbs and adverbs, Computer Graphics and Applications 1998 Required: Pullen and Bregler, Motion capture assisted animation: texturing and synthesis, SIGGRAPH 2002 |
| Wednesday, May 27th | Required: Kovar et al., Motion graphs, SIGGRAPH 2002 Required: Arikan and Forsyth, Interactive motion generation from examples, SIGGRAPH 2002 Required: Lee et al., Interactive control of avatars animated with human motion data, SIGGRAPH 2002 |
| Monday, June 1st | Guest Lecture: Larry Cutler (Character TD Supervisor on "Mastermind", PDI/Dreamworks), "Rigging and Character Setup", held in Gates 392 |
| Wednesday, June 3rd | Guest Lecture: Jason Schleifer (Head of Character Animation on "Mastermind", PDI/Dreamworks), "Animation", held in Gates 104 |
The course has two programming assignments, both linked to in the handout list above. The first is on inverse kinematics and the second is on motion capture.
| Date | Description |
|---|---|
| Wednesday, April 15th | Assignment 1, Inverse Kinematics: Instructions, Starting Code, Blank QuatSlerp.m |
| Monday, May 18th | Assignment 2, Motion Capture: Instructions, Files |