Procedural modeling of water caustics and foamy water for cartoon animation

We propose a method for procedural modeling and animation of cartoon water effects such as water caustics and foamy water. In our method we emulate the visual abstraction of these cartoon effects by the use of Voronoi diagrams and the motion abstraction by designing relevant controlling mechanisms corresponding to each effect. Our system enables the creation of cartoon effects with minimal intervention from the animator. Through high-level initial specification, the effects are animated procedurally in the style of hand-drawn cartoons. © 2010 IEEE

Doctor of Philosophy in Computing

dissertationPhysics-based animation has proven to be a powerful tool for creating compelling animations for film and games. Most techniques in graphics are based on methods developed for predictive simulation for engineering applications; however, the goals for graphics applications are dramatically different than the goals of engineering applications. As a result, most physics-based animation tools are difficult for artists to work with, providing little direct control over simulation results. In this thesis, we describe tools for physics-based animation designed with artist needs and expertise in mind. Most materials can be modeled as elastoplastic: they recover from small deformations, but large deformations permanently alter their rest shape. Unfortunately, large plastic deformations, common in graphical applications, cause simulation instabilities if not addressed. Most elastoplastic simulation techniques in graphics rely on a finite-element approach where objects are discretized into a tetrahedral mesh. Using these approaches, maintaining simulation stability during large plastic flows requires remeshing, a complex and computationally expensive process. We introduce a new point-based approach that does not rely on an explicit mesh and avoids the expense of remeshing. Our approach produces comparable results with much lower implementation complexity. Points are a ubiquitous primitive for many effects, so our approach also integrates well with existing artist pipelines. Next, we introduce a new technique for animating stylized images which we call Dynamic Sprites. Artists can use our tool to create digital assets that interact in a natural, but stylized, way in virtual environments. In order to support the types of nonphysical, exaggerated motions often desired by artists, our approach relies on a heavily modified deformable body simulator, equipped with a set of new intuitive controls and an example-based deformation model. Our approach allows artists to specify how the shape of the object should change as it moves and collides in interactive virtual environments. Finally, we introduce a new technique for animating destructive scenes. Our approach is built on the insight that the most important visual aspects of destruction are plastic deformation and fracture. Like with Dynamic Sprites, we use an example-based model of deformation for intuitive artist control. Our simulator treats objects as rigid when computing dynamics but allows them to deform plastically and fracture in between timesteps based on interactions with the other objects. We demonstrate that our approach can efficiently animate the types of destructive scenes common in film and games. These animation techniques are designed to exploit artist expertise to ease creation of complex animations. By using artist-friendly primitives and allowing artists to provide characteristic deformations as input, our techniques enable artists to create more compelling animations, more easily

Getting Back The Lost

Getting Back the Lost is an animated graduate thesis film with a total running time of 7 minutes and 13 seconds. The film is about a girl seeking hope in a ruined and destroyed environment. Nowadays, the global environmental problem, which is due to human activities, is becoming increasingly serious. Human beings have overused natural resources in a continuous and reckless way, without caring about their harmful and detrimental effects on this earth. Getting Back the Lost is a story that takes place in a former land of oil extraction and production. It is a place that represents what the rest of the world is like – desolate, dangerous, and highly polluted. It is devoid of others, except for the main character of the story, a girl who lives alone in the only place that has some nature left. There’s only one tree standing in the whole area that protects a tree house where the girl lives as she is performing experiments on the planting of seeds. In the beginning of the story, the girl, who is almost robot-like, is trying to find a way to plant seeds in the polluted ground around her to save her small piece of land. Her experiments are failing. The plants she grows are dying. She also finds she has run out of seeds to plant new vegetation and so she needs to obtain more. The girl ventures beyond her safe area to explore the destroyed world around her with the hope that she will find more seeds somewhere. As she travels further and further away from her home, she journeys onto the “ruined land” on the other side of the mountains where petroleum fields and factories are deserted and in ruins. She comes upon a site that shows traces of recent human occupation, and she finds seeds and collects them. The girl rushes away from this place because of an unexpected earthquake. During her way back home, the seeds she has collected in a bottle fall out, leaving a trail of seeds behind her. When she arrives at the door of her home, she realizes the seeds in the bottle are gone. She looks back in the direction she ran and sees the seeds spread out on the ground. She feels extremely sad when she finds this. But the seeds on the ground suddenly sink into the earth and magically grow into small plants, and then the whole area becomes green. Getting Back the Lost is a 3D animation with a 2D graphic style. It is produced primarily in Autodesk Maya, The Foundry Mari, The Foundry Nuke, Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Premiere Pro. This paper outlines the entire film creation process from the idea development through the final post production stage. It describes all my intentions, obstacles, failures and successes, as well as the technical specifics of the process

Higher level techniques for the artistic rendering of images and video

EThOS - Electronic Theses Online ServiceGBUnited Kingdo

Latin American Online Animation: General Overview of its Contextual Conditions and Analysis of its Formal Traits.

The Latin American children of the late 1990s and 2000s grew up watching cartoons, just like those decades before; however, for the first time, many of these cartoons were being made by them. That was only the beginning… Benefiting from new digital animation technology and Internet availability as much as from a renewed sense of what cartoons were and for whom, online animation became one of the earliest and most popular forms of online media in Latin America and the world. And yet, their popularity is relatively confined to the Internet and their academic study remains scarce. This thesis aims to remediate this absence and to provide a base from which to give a better account of Latin American online animation. In doing so, it can improve our understanding of other online media’s connection with socio-economic, technological, ideological, and aesthetic imperatives. I highlight the role of economic class and cultural imperialism in online animation’s aesthetic and contents, consider the role of cable networks in both shaping these tastes and offering a precedent for online platforms like YouTube, and review the technological limitations leading to an online animation vernacular (regional and global). I focus on this vernacular’s formal traits as a necessary first step to approach online animation and potentially other media. Ultimately, I provide a socio-economic and techno-historical context for Latin American online animation’s visual culture and its media and geo-cultural specificity. This research is all the more necessary in the face of the impermanence of online media

Drawing from motion capture : developing visual languages of animation

The work presented in this thesis aims to explore novel approaches of combining motion capture with drawing and 3D animation. As the art form of animation matures, possibilities of hybrid techniques become more feasible, and crosses between traditional and digital media provide new opportunities for artistic expression. 3D computer animation is used for its keyframing and rendering advancements, that result in complex pipelines where different areas of technical and artistic specialists contribute to the end result. Motion capture is mostly used for realistic animation, more often than not for live-action filmmaking, as a visual effect. Realistic animated films depend on retargeting techniques, designed to preserve actors performances with a high degree of accuracy. In this thesis, we investigate alternative production methods that do not depend on retargeting, and provide animators with greater options for experimentation and expressivity. As motion capture data is a great source for naturalistic movements, we aim to combine it with interactive methods such as digital sculpting and 3D drawing. As drawing is predominately used in preproduction, in both the case of realistic animation and visual effects, we embed it instead to alternative production methods, where artists can benefit from improvisation and expression, while emerging in a three-dimensional environment. Additionally, we apply these alternative methods for the visual development of animation, where they become relevant for the creation of specific visual languages that can be used to articulate concrete ideas for storytelling in animation