Introduction to Character Animation

1
Introduction to Character Animation

• Karan Singh
• Lecture 1 CSC 2529

2
Animation Principles

• Squash and Stretch.
• Follow Through and Overlapping Action.
• Slow in and Out.
• Exaggeration.
• Secondary Action.
• Appeal.

3
Animation Principles

• Timing and Motion.
• Anticipation.
• Staging.
• Straight Ahead Action and Pose-to-Pose Action.
• Arcs.

4
Animation Art or martial art?

5
Production pipeline

Script
Storyboard
2D animatic
Character sketches
Character setup Motion tests
3D animatic
Lighting, Rendering
Animation
Compositing
Post production
6
Layered Approach

• Skeletal.
• Muscle.
• Skin and underlying tissue.
• Hair, nails, blemishes.
• Clothes and accessories.

7
Layered Approach

• Skeletal.
• Muscle.
• Skin and underlying tissue.
• Hair, nails, blemishes.
• Clothes and accessories.

8
Layered Approach

• Skeletal.
• Muscle.
• Skin and underlying tissue.
• Hair, nails, blemishes.
• Clothes and accessories.

9
Layered Approach

• Skeletal.
• Muscle.
• Skin and underlying tissue.
• Hair, nails, blemishes.
• Clothes and accessories.

10
Skeletal models

• Robot-like
• Human bones 206, CG approx. 40
• Human bones flexible, 6 DOF joints. CG bones
  rigid, 3DOF
• Skeletal control
• Kinematic
• Dynamic
• Procedural
• Motion Capture

11
Muscle and Skin Models

• Geometric.
• Physically-based.

12
Muscle and Skin (Physically-based)

• Anatomic.
• Spring and dampers.
• Finite Element Method.

13
Muscle and Skin (Physically-based)

• Anatomic.
• Spring and dampers.
• Finite Element Method.

14
Muscle and Skin (Geometric)

• Free-form deformations.
• Joint local operators.
• Parametric models.
• Implicit surfaces.
• 3D scanning.

15
Muscle and Skin (Geometric)

• Free-form deformations.
• Joint local operators.
• Parametric models.
• Implicit surfaces.
• 3D scanning.

16
Muscle and Skin (Geometric)

• Free-form deformations.
• Joint local operators.
• Parametric models.
• Implicit surfaces.
• 3D scanning.

17
Clothing

• Dressing
• Virtual Clothing P. Volino, N. Magnenant-Thalmann,
  University of Geneva.
• Spring and dampers.
• Baraff, David and Andrew Witkin. Large Steps in
  Cloth Simulation, Proceedings of SIGGRAPH 1998,
  pp. 43-54.
• Bridson et al. SIGGRAPH 2002.
• Wrinkles, texturing.
• BOOK Cloth Modeling and Animation Donald H.
  House David E. Breen

18
Hair and blemishes

• Styling
• Spring and dampers.
• Volume Rendering.
• Skin shading

19
Layered Characters