Reusing view-dependent animation

In this paper we present techniques for reusing view-dependent animation. First, we provide a framework for representing view-dependent animations. We formulate the concept of a view space, which is the space formed by the key views and their associated character poses. Tracing a path on the view space generates the corresponding view-dependent animation in real time. We then demonstrate that the framework can be used to synthesize new stylized animations by reusing view-dependent animations. We present three types of novel reuse techniques. In the first we show how to animate multiple characters from the same view space. Next, we show how to animate multiple characters from multiple view spaces. We use this technique to animate a crowd of characters. Finally, we draw inspiration from cubist paintings and create their view-dependent analogues by using different cameras to control different body parts of the same characte

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

Animate Metaphors to Satire Leaders in Tenas Effendy's Pantun "Kelakar"

This writing deals with an analysis of Pantun Kelakar written by Tenas Effendy by focusing on 4 ( four)  of them and analysis the animate metaphors ( animal metaphors) used in these four pantuns in exploring how those animate metaphors reflects leaders’ characters. This study is descriptive analysis where this study aims to describe the existing phenomena. In this case, this study describes the animate metaphors in Pantun Kelakar of Tenas effendy which satire leaders. The animal metaphors found in those 4 pantuns are; crocodile, monkey, lion and snake, and those animals are the analogy of leaders whose characters are associated with the characters of the animals in which they are associated with. Crocodile is the metaphor to satire leader who ignore the rules in taking or consuming something which leads to the life without guidance.  The monkey is the metaphor to satire a leader who does immoral deeds. A lion is used as the metaphor of powerful leader who destroys his/her people and snake is the metaphor of sly or cunning leader. by describing those metaphors, this analysis may contribute to create awareness for leaders whose characters are reflected by the metaphors to treat this analysis as a self-reminder to change and improve the person’s character. and in the same time, this analysis may also contribute to give knowledge about some kinds of leaders with their specific characters in leading their peopl

The detection of intentional contingencies in simple animations in patients with delusions of persecution

Background. It has been proposed that delusions of persecution are caused by the tendency to over-attribute malevolent intentions to other people's actions. One aspect of intention attribution is detecting contingencies between an agent's actions and intentions. Here, we used simplified stimuli to test the hypothesis that patients with persecutory delusions over-attribute contingency to agents' movements. Method. Short animations were presented to three groups of subjects: (1) schizophrenic patients; (2) patients with affective disorders; and (3) normal control subjects. Patients were divided on the basis of the presence or absence of delusions of persecution. Participants watched four types of film featuring two shapes. In half the films one shape's movement was contingent on the other shape. Contingency was either ‘intentional’: one shape moved when it ‘saw’ another shape; or ‘mechanical’: one shape was launched by the other shape. Subjects were asked to rate the strength of the relationship between the movement of the shapes. Results. Normal control subjects and patients without delusions of persecution rated the relationship between the movement of the shapes as stronger in both mechanical and intentional contingent conditions than in non-contingent conditions. In contrast, there was no significant difference between the ratings of patients with delusions of persecution for the conditions in which movement was animate. Patients with delusions of persecution perceived contingency when there was none in the animate non-contingent condition. Conclusions. The results suggest that delusions of persecution may be associated with the over-attribution of contingency to the actions of agents

How has my learning enabled me to create and share an animated video to assist newly qualified teachers in the creation of a safe critical space for their students?

This paper presents my emergent living theory as it developed while I attempted to address my concern “How has my learning enabled me to create and share an animated video to assist Newly Qualified Teachers in the creation of a safe critical space for their students?” I explore how my learning on the Masters in Education and Training Management (e-learning) has affected me both personally and professionally and how my learning has impacted the learning of others. In particular, I look at the role of critical pedagogy as it impacted my development of the video. I document the creation and distribution of an animated video using the State package by Xtranormal, through one action reflection cycle. I claim that through the use of an animated educational video, NQTs may engage critically with classroom management and in so doing improve their practice so that they can facilitate critical discourse among their students in a safe environment

Capture, Learning, and Synthesis of 3D Speaking Styles

Audio-driven 3D facial animation has been widely explored, but achieving realistic, human-like performance is still unsolved. This is due to the lack of available 3D datasets, models, and standard evaluation metrics. To address this, we introduce a unique 4D face dataset with about 29 minutes of 4D scans captured at 60 fps and synchronized audio from 12 speakers. We then train a neural network on our dataset that factors identity from facial motion. The learned model, VOCA (Voice Operated Character Animation) takes any speech signal as input - even speech in languages other than English - and realistically animates a wide range of adult faces. Conditioning on subject labels during training allows the model to learn a variety of realistic speaking styles. VOCA also provides animator controls to alter speaking style, identity-dependent facial shape, and pose (i.e. head, jaw, and eyeball rotations) during animation. To our knowledge, VOCA is the only realistic 3D facial animation model that is readily applicable to unseen subjects without retargeting. This makes VOCA suitable for tasks like in-game video, virtual reality avatars, or any scenario in which the speaker, speech, or language is not known in advance. We make the dataset and model available for research purposes at http://voca.is.tue.mpg.de.Comment: To appear in CVPR 201

Accessibility of referent information influences sentence planning : An eye-tracking study

Acknowledgments We thank Phoebe Ye and Gouming Martens for help with data collection for Experiment 1 and 2, respectively. This research was supported by the European Research Council for the ERC Starting Grant (206198) to YC.Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Materialism’s Affective Appeal

Citing the pronounced lack of academic engagement with Middlesex since its publication and riffing on the novel’s recounting of the demise of the auto industry in Detroit, Mazzolini examines how cycles of obsolescence and currency work within academic discourse and ultimately advocates for the novel’s potential for examining the material and affective nature of relevance itself

Inducing Stereotypical Character Roles from Plot Structure

If we are to understand stories, we must understand characters: characters are central to every narrative and drive the action forward. Critically, many stories (especially cultural ones) employ stereotypical character roles in their stories for different purposes, including efficient communication among bundles of default characteristics and associations, ease understanding of those characters\u27 role in the overall narrative, and many more. These roles include ideas such as hero, villain, or victim, as well as culturally-specific roles such as, for example, the donor (in Russian tales) or the trickster (in Native American tales). My thesis aims to learn these roles automatically, inducing them from data using a clustering technique. The first step of learning character roles, however, is to identify which coreference chains correspond to characters, which are defined by narratologists as animate entities that drive the plot forward. The first part of my work has focused on this character identification problem, specifically focusing on the problem of animacy detection. Prior work treated animacy as a word-level property, and researchers developed statistical models to classify words as either animate or inanimate. I claimed this approach to the problem is ill-posed and presented a new hybrid approach for classifying the animacy of coreference chains that achieved state-of-the-art performance. The next step of my work is to develop approaches first to identify the characters and then a new unsupervised clustering approach to learn stereotypical roles. My character identification system consists of two stages: first, I detect animate chains from the coreference chains using my existing animacy detector; second, I apply a supervised machine learning model that identifies which of those chains qualify as characters. I proposed a narratologically grounded definition of character and built a supervised machine learning model with a small set of features that achieved state-of-the-art performance. In the last step, I successfully implemented a clustering approach with plot and thematic information to cluster the archetypes. This work resulted in a completely new approach to understanding the structure of stories, greatly advancing the state-of-the-art of story understanding

Foxes, hounds, and horses : Who or which?

Writers of English can choose whether to mark a high level of sentience in a nonhuman animal by selecting the word who rather than which. An examination of texts relating to foxhunting on the world wide web showed that, in reference to the nonhuman animals involved in foxhunting, writers were most likely to use who in reference to foxes, and least likely to use it in reference to horses. Those who support foxhunting are more likely to recognize the sentience of the fox than those who oppose foxhunting. This may be because those who enjoy foxhunting present the fox as an active creator of the hunt, and as a worthy opponen