Real Time Animation of Virtual Humans: A Trade-off Between Naturalness and Control

Virtual humans are employed in many interactive applications using 3D virtual environments, including (serious) games. The motion of such virtual humans should look realistic (or ‘natural’) and allow interaction with the surroundings and other (virtual) humans. Current animation techniques differ in the trade-off they offer between motion naturalness and the control that can be exerted over the motion. We show mechanisms to parametrize, combine (on different body parts) and concatenate motions generated by different animation techniques. We discuss several aspects of motion naturalness and show how it can be evaluated. We conclude by showing the promise of combinations of different animation paradigms to enhance both naturalness and control

Nonlinear dance motion analysis and motion editing using Hilbert-Huang transform

Human motions (especially dance motions) are very noisy, and it is hard to analyze and edit the motions. To resolve this problem, we propose a new method to decompose and modify the motions using the Hilbert-Huang transform (HHT). First, HHT decomposes a chromatic signal into "monochromatic" signals that are the so-called Intrinsic Mode Functions (IMFs) using an Empirical Mode Decomposition (EMD) [6]. After applying the Hilbert Transform to each IMF, the instantaneous frequencies of the "monochromatic" signals can be obtained. The HHT has the advantage to analyze non-stationary and nonlinear signals such as human-joint-motions over FFT or Wavelet transform. In the present paper, we propose a new framework to analyze and extract some new features from a famous Japanese threesome pop singer group called "Perfume", and compare it with Waltz and Salsa dance. Using the EMD, their dance motions can be decomposed into motion (choreographic) primitives or IMFs. Therefore we can scale, combine, subtract, exchange, and modify those IMFs, and can blend them into new dance motions self-consistently. Our analysis and framework can lead to a motion editing and blending method to create a new dance motion from different dance motions.Comment: 6 pages, 10 figures, Computer Graphics International 2017, Conference short pape

The use of non-intrusive user logging to capture engineering rationale, knowledge and intent during the product life cycle

Within the context of Life Cycle Engineering it is important that structured engineering information and knowledge are captured at all phases of the product life cycle for future reference. This is especially the case for long life cycle projects which see a large number of engineering decisions made at the early to mid-stages of a product's life cycle that are needed to inform engineering decisions later on in the process. A key aspect of technology management will be the capturing of knowledge through out the product life cycle. Numerous attempts have been made to apply knowledge capture techniques to formalise engineering decision rationale and processes; however, these tend to be associated with substantial overheads on the engineer and the company through cognitive process interruptions and additional costs/time. Indeed, when life cycle deadlines come closer these capturing techniques are abandoned due the need to produce a final solution. This paper describes work carried out for non-intrusively capturing and formalising product life cycle knowledge by demonstrating the automated capture of engineering processes/rationale using user logging via an immersive virtual reality system for cable harness design and assembly planning. Associated post-experimental analyses are described which demonstrate the formalisation of structured design processes and decision representations in the form of IDEF diagrams and structured engineering change information. Potential future research directions involving more thorough logging of users are also outlined