Integrated character modeling and animation
In this project, we propose the development of a new method to integrate modelling and animation using physics based temporal and spatial sweeping surfaces. The creation and deformation of the surfaces can be formulated as an initial-boundary-value problem. It consists of a physics based equation of motion containing a time-dependent force field related to skeleton movement, and initial and boundary conditions. The equation describes how surfaces deform physically with time. The initial conditions present a mathematical description of the character model at the rest pose. And the boundary conditions define the smoothness between different sweeping surfaces.
The investigation will include:
1). Determination of initial conditions. This work is to formulate sketch-based sweeping surfaces of character models at the rest post. In order to simplify the modeling task, achieve high modeling efficiency, and reduce the data size, the research here is to develop sketch-based sweeping surfaces and use them to define the initial conditions. This new method will create sweeping surfaces from few sketches and refine the surfaces by manipulating a force field embedded in the sweeping surfaces.
2). Automatic skeleton construction. This work is to construct the skeleton of sweeping surfaces whose movement will be used to determine a time-dependent force field. Different from the existing techniques of skeleton construction, we will investigate a new method which divides character models into parts, and automatically constructs a skeleton from these parts.
3). Determination of the time-dependent force field. We intend to develop three new techniques to determine the time-dependent force field. They are: sculpting force-based painting tool, skin-based algorithm, and anatomy based algorithm. With the sculpting force-based painting tool, we will investigate how to determine the initial force field at the rest pose and how it changes with the skeleton movement of sketch-based sweeping surfaces. With the skin-based algorithm, we will examine how the time-dependent force field is determined from some example skin shapes related to skeleton movement. With the anatomy based algorithm, we will study the construction of realistic muscle models and determine the time-dependent force field from deformations of muscle models caused by skeleton movement.
4). Formulating and solving the initial-boundary-value problem of character modeling and animation. The research here is to propose a physics based equation of motion involving a time-dependent force field, develop an efficient analytical integration of the initial-boundary-value problem, and create physics based temporal and spatial sweeping surfaces to animate character models.
5). Development of Maya plug-in software environment.
