Topics in Computer Animation


	"Sumitori" by H. Ogata.

Topics in Computer Animation

Computer Science 88/188
Winter, 1999

Tues, Thurs 4 PM

Place: 213 Sudikoff

Professor Bruce Randall Donald

113 Sudikoff Lab, x6-3173

http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~brd/Teaching/Animation/

Overview

Schedule

Bibliography

Some Relevant WWW Links

How to give a good talk

Overview

Animated images are almost magical in their ability to capture our imagination. By telling a compelling story, astounding with special effects, or mesmerizing with abstract motion, animation can infuse a sequence of inert images with the illusion of life.

We will focus on the temporal aspects of the animation process, as opposed to the static modelling aspects. In spite of the explosion of 3D computer graphics in film and video, and a plethora of research, many problems remain still open. Most of the animations you see commercially are still done through keyframing techniques, which are highly labor intensive and not necessarily intuitive or enabling of the creative process. One alternative, motion capture, is effective for human figures, but also remains labor intensive, and its use is mostly limited to realistic anthropomorphic animations.

This course will explore a variety of techniques used in the process of creating complex computer animations. A particular focus of the course will be motion generation, (the task of specifying the motion of an object to the computer).

Students will be required to present papers in the seminar, and to do a project. There might also be some quizzes.

Prerequisites: CS 25 and CS 43.

How to Give a Good Talk

If you are scheduled to give a talk, I've prepared a set of hints for giving a good talk that I encourage you to look over.

Schedule and Readings

1/7 Introduction and Welcome.
- Introduction to Computer Animation [Compressed PostScript] [PDF]
- Cartoon laws of physics
1/12 Basic Concepts.
- Readings:
  1. Principles of Animation [PDF]
  2. Keyframing [PDF]
  3. Configuration Space:
1/14 Kinodynamic planning.
- Readings:
  1. Kinodynamic Motion Planning (B. R. Donald, P. Xavier, J. Canny, and J. Reif) Journal of the ACM, Vol. 40, No. 5, Nov., 1993. pp. 1048-1066.
  2. Provably Good Approximation Algorithms for Optimal Kinodynamic Planning: Robots with Decoupled Dynamics Bounds (B. R. Donald and P. Xavier) Algorithmica (Vol 14, no 6) (1995). pp. 443-479.
  3. Provably Good Approximation Algorithms for Optimal Kinodynamic Planning for Cartesian Robots and Open Chain Manipulators (B. R. Donald and P. Xavier) Algorithmica (Vol 14, no 6) (1995). pp. 480-530.
- Watch animation videos!
1/19 Presenting: Robert Savell
Kinematics and inverse kinematics
1/21 Presenting: Fred Henle
- Lab demo: demos of the Phantom.
1/26 Presenting: Robert Savell
Kinematics and inverse kinematics (Continued).
- Lab demo: demos of the Ascension motion capture system, plus constraint software from Lambsoft. Demo of how keyframing works and other basics.
1/26 Guest Lecture: David G. Ehrlich!
1/28 Presenting: Robert Savell
Kinematics and inverse kinematics (Continued).
- Lab demo: demos of the Ascension motion capture system, plus constraint software from Lambsoft. Demo of how keyframing works and other basics.
2/2 Presenting: Tilmann Steinberg
Spacetime Constraints.
- Spacetime Constraints- Witkin, Kass.
- Interactive Spacetime Control for Animation - Michael Cohen.
2/4 Presenting: Tilmann Steinberg (Spacetime Constraints, continued)
2/9 Presenting: Benjamin Hill
- Spacetime Constraints Revisited- Ngo, Marks.
2/11 Presenting: Robert Savell
Least Constraint.
- Least Constraint: A Framework for the Control of Complex Mechanical Systems - Dinesh Pai.
- Robot Programming and Constraints - Dinesh Pai.
2/16 Presenting: Fred Henle
- Principles of Traditional Animation Applied to 3d Computer Animation - John Lasseter.
- Motion Warping - Witkin and Popovic.
2/18 Presenting: Tilmann Steinberg
- Verbs and Adverbs: Multidimensional Motion Interpolation - Rose, Cohen, Bodenheimer.
- Motion Signal Processing - Bruderlin, Williams.
2/23 Presenting: Benjamin Hill
- Constraint-based Motion Adaptation - Gleicher and Litwinowicz.
- Retargetting Motion to New Characters - Gleicher.
2/25 Presenting: Tilmann Steinberg (Note Change)
- Sensor-Actuator Networks - Panne and Fiume.
- Reusable Motion Synthesis Using State-Space Controllers - Panne, Fiume, Vranesic.
3/2 Presenting: Robert Savell
- Limit Cycle Control and Its Application to the Animation of Balancing and Walking - Laszlo, Panne, Fiume.
- Tad McGeer, Passive Dynamic Walking.
- The simplest walking model: Stability, Complexity, and Scaling - Garcia, Chatterjee, Ruina, and Coleman
- An Uncontrolled Walking Toy that Cannot Stand Still - Ruina and Coleman
3/4 Presenting: Fred Henle (Note Change)
- Biped Gymnastics - Hodgins and Raibert.
- Animation of Dynamic Legged Locomotion - Raibert and Hodgins.
- Animating Human Athletics - Hodgins, Wooten, Brogan, O'Brien.
3/9 Presenting: Benjamin Hill, Robert Savell, Tillmann Steinberg
Project Presentations.
Here is a list of some other papers we may read.