Sketching-out virtual humans: From 2d storyboarding to immediate 3d character animation

Virtual beings are playing a remarkable role in today’s public entertainment, while ordinary users are still treated as audiences due to the lack of appropriate expertise, equipment, and computer skills. In this paper, we present a fast and intuitive storyboarding interface, which enables users to sketch-out 3D virtual humans, 2D/3D animations, and character intercommunication. We devised an intuitive “stick figurefleshing-outskin mapping” graphical animation pipeline, which realises the whole process of key framing, 3D pose reconstruction, virtual human modelling, motion path/timing control, and the final animation synthesis by almost pure 2D sketching. A “creative model-based method” is developed, which emulates a human perception process, to generate the 3D human bodies of variational sizes, shapes, and fat distributions. Meanwhile, our current system also supports the sketch-based crowd animation and the storyboarding of the 3D multiple character intercommunication. This system has been formally tested by various users on Tablet PC. After minimal training, even a beginner can create vivid virtual humans and animate them within minutes

Computer-assisted animation creation techniques for hair animation and shade, highlight, and shadow

制度:新 ; 報告番号:甲3062号 ; 学位の種類:博士(工学) ; 授与年月日:2010/2/25 ; 早大学位記番号:新532

A 3D Pipeline for 2D Pixel Art Animation

Aquest document presenta un informe exhaustiu sobre un projecte destinat a desenvolupar un procés automatitzat per a la creació d'animacions 2D a partir de models 3D utilitzant Blender. L'objectiu principal del projecte és millorar les tècniques existents i reduir la necessitat que els artistes realitzin tasques repetitives en el procés de producció d'animació. El projecte implica el disseny i desenvolupament d'un complement per a Blender, programat en Python, que es va desenvolupar per ser eficient i reduir les tasques intensives en temps que solen caracteritzar algunes etapes en el procés d'animació. El complement suporta tres estils específics d'animació: l'art de píxel, "cel shader", i "cel shader" amb contorns, i es pot expandir per suportar una àmplia gamma d'estils. El complement també és de codi obert, permetent una major col·laboració i potencials contribucions per part de la comunitat. Malgrat els problemes trobats, el projecte ha estat exitós en aconseguir els seus objectius, i els resultats mostren que el complement pot aconseguir resultats similars als adquirits amb eines similars i animació tradicional. El treball futur inclou mantenir el complement actualitzat amb les últimes versions de Blender, publicar-lo a GitHub i mercats de complements de Blender, així com afegir nous estils d'art.This document presents a comprehensive report on a project aimed at developing an automated process for creating 2D animations from 3D models using Blender. The project's main goal is to improve upon existing techniques and reduce the need for artists to do clerical tasks in the animation production process. The project involves the design and development of a plugin for Blender, coded in Python, which was developed to be efficient and reduce time-intensive tasks that usually characterise some stages in the animation process. The plugin supports three specific styles of animation: pixel art, cel shading, and cel shading with outlines, and can be expanded to support a wider range of styles. The plugin is also open-source, allowing for greater collaboration and potential contributions from the community. Despite the challenges faced, the project was successful in achieving its goals, and the results show that the plugin could achieve results similar to those acquired with similar tools and traditional animation. The future work includes keeping the plugin up-to-date with the latest versions of Blender, publishing it on GitHub and Blender plugin markets, as well as adding new art styles

The Evolution of Stop-motion Animation Technique Through 120 Years of Technological Innovations

Stop-motion animation history has been put on paper by several scholars and practitioners who tried to organize 120 years of technological innovations and material experiments dealing with a huge literature. Bruce Holman (1975), Neil Pettigrew (1999), Ken Priebe (2010), Stefano Bessoni (2014), and more recently Adrián Encinas Salamanca (2017), provided the most detailed even tough partial attempts of systematization, and designed historical reconstructions by considering specific periods of time, film lengths or the use of stop-motion as special effect rather than an animation technique. This article provides another partial historical reconstruction of the evolution of stop-motion and outlines the main events that occurred in the development of this technique, following criteria based on the innovations in the technology of materials and manufacturing processes that have influenced the fabrication of puppets until the present day. The systematization follows a chronological order and takes into account events that changed the technique of a puppets’ manufacturing process as a consequence of the use of either new fabrication processes or materials. Starting from the accident that made the French film-pioneer Georges Méliès discover the trick of the replacement technique at the end of the nineteenth century, the reconstruction goes through 120 years of experiments and films. “Build up” puppets fabricated by the Russian puppet animator Ladislaw Starevicz with insect exoskeletons, the use of clay puppets and the innovations introduced by LAIKA entertainment in the last decade such as Stereoscopic photography and the 3D computer printed replacement pieces, and then the increasing influence of digital technologies in the process of puppet fabrication are some of the main considered events. Technology transfers, new materials’ features, innovations in the way of animating puppets, are the main aspects through which this historical analysis approaches the previously mentioned events. This short analysis is supposed to remind and demonstrate that stop-motion animation is an interdisciplinary occasion of both artistic expression and technological experimentation, and that its evolution and aesthetic is related to cultural, geographical and technological issues. Lastly, if the technology of materials and processes is a constantly evolving field, what future can be expected for this cinematographic technique? The article ends with this open question and without providing an answer it implicitly states the role of stop-motion as a driving force for innovations that come from other fields and are incentivized by the needs of this specific sector

Pictonaut: movie cartoonization using 3D human pose estimation and GANs

This article describes Pictonaut, a novel method to automatically synthetise animated shots from motion picture footage. Its results are editable (backgrounds, characters, lighting, etc.) with conventional 3D software, and they have the finish of professional 2D animation. Rather than addressing the challenge solely as an image translation problem, a hybrid approach combining multi-person 3D human pose estimation and GANs is taken. Sub-sampled video frames are processed with OpenPose and SMPLify-X to obtain the 3D parameters of the pose (body, hands and face expression) of all depicted characters. The captured parameters are retargeted into manually selected 3D models, cel shaded to mimic the style of a 2D cartoon. The results of sub-sampled frames are interpolated to generate a complete and smooth motion for all the characters. The background is cartoonized with a GAN. Qualitative evaluation shows that the approach is feasible, and a small dataset of synthetised shots obtained from real movie scenes is provided.This work is partially supported by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation under contract PID2019-107255GB, and by the SGR programme 2017-SGR-1414 of the Catalan Government.Peer ReviewedPostprint (published version

Modeling and Python Scripting in Maya for the Animation Short \u3cem\u3eStyle\u3c/em\u3e

The computer animation and graphics industry has dramatically improved over the years alongside the growth of technology. This paper discusses how that came about through a specific tool called Maya. It talks about its features and what it can create for you and the world. It also describes how scripting can simplify a job and make more of it. It highlights the effectiveness of the ability to manipulate code to create something amazing

Xeero: A 3D Action-Puzzle-Platforming Game

This report discusses the design and development of Xeero, a 3D action-puzzle- platforming game constructed from our own custom engine, original art and sound assets. Despite a small development team, we strove to create a highly-polished and marketable interactive experience. We explain the methodology employed, results gained, and challenges faced by each member of the team in pursuit of this goal