Group Based Rigging of Realistically Feathered Wings

Digital birds are used in computer graphics to replace live animals both for the safety of the animal and to allow for more control over performance. The current treatment of avian wings in computer graphics is often over-simplified which results in a loss realism due to the incorrect form and motion of the feathers. This research attempts to address this problem by using the structure and motion of real bird anatomy to inform the creation of biologically accurate kinematic motion for wings. The hypothesis of this thesis is that a wing rig which follows biological accuracy will appear realistic in motion and facilitate efficient animation. This thesis describes the creation of a rig generation tool, called WingCreator, usable in 3D animation software to guide the construction of biologically accurate wings while maintaining a range of artistically-driven variability in form. The control system for the kinematic motion rig is designed to provide animators with intuitive control over wing behavior intended to result in efficient re-creation of realistic wing action including flapping and folding. WingCreator was tested by two riggers and one animator to gain feedback on the tools efficacy. The user feedback indicates that the resulting rig provides a control system that facilitates efficient animation while maintaining artistic control over the wing. Users reported that realism, however, could not be judged due to the numerous contributing outside factors, such as animation, lighting and texturing, that affect the perception of realism. WingCreator and its creation methodology is intended to be placed in the public domain for use by anyone and will add to the currently slim body of knowledge for creating realistic avian wings. Once placed in the public domain it is expected that this rig will be appropriated by animators who wish to create more accurate bird wing motion and by riggers who may use the biologically-driven methodology as a model for further exploration into depictions of other animals exhibiting complex form and structural motion behaviors

Scales and Scale-like Structures

Scales are a visually striking feature that grows on many animals. These small, rigid plates embedded in the skin form an integral part of our description of fish and reptiles, some plants, and many extinct animals. Scales exist in many shapes and sizes, and serve as protection, camouflage, and plumage for animals. The variety of scales and the animals they grow from pose an interesting problem in the field of Computer Graphics. This dissertation presents a method for generating scales and scale-like structures on a polygonal mesh through surface replacement. A triangular mesh was covered with scales and one or more proxy-models were used as the scales shape. A user began scale generation by drawing a lateral line on the model to control the distribution and orientation of scales on the surface. Next, a vector field was created over the surface to control an anisotropic Voronoi tessellation, which represents the region occupied by each scale. Then these regions were replaced by cutting the proxy model to match the boundary of the Voronoi region and deform the cut model onto the surface. The final result is a fully connected 2-manifold that is suitable for subsequent post-processing applications, like surface subdivision

When photography and drawing meet fashion

Group exhibition of the recent work of seventeen artists, designers and researchers from London college of Fashion (including Stephen Farthing, Charlotte Hodes, Lucy Orta, Simon Thorogood, and Sandy Black) curated by Charlotte Hodes. The exhibition aimed to show the diversity and applications for drawing and photography giving an insight into the origins of exploration. When Photography and Drawing Meet Fashion grew out of the successful exhibition 'Drawing Towards Fashion' at London College of Fashion, University of the Arts London which was staged in 2007. This exhibition had highlighted the multitude of approaches towards drawing inherent in the work of artists, designers and researchers at London College of Fashion. It was clear from this exhibition that the role of drawing is often an invisible process in the creative field of fashion. Furthermore, it was felt that by adding photography, a new and more ambitious exhibition could be formed, building on these concerns, which would provide insights into the genesis of ideas in the fashion industry. The exhibition highlighted that drawing is often the invisible process within the creative field of fashion

Advances in Robotics, Automation and Control

The book presents an excellent overview of the recent developments in the different areas of Robotics, Automation and Control. Through its 24 chapters, this book presents topics related to control and robot design; it also introduces new mathematical tools and techniques devoted to improve the system modeling and control. An important point is the use of rational agents and heuristic techniques to cope with the computational complexity required for controlling complex systems. Through this book, we also find navigation and vision algorithms, automatic handwritten comprehension and speech recognition systems that will be included in the next generation of productive systems developed by man

The political promise of choreography in performance and/as research: First Physical Theatre Company’s manifesto and repertory, 1993-2015

This study redefines the political in dance by drawing on the scholarly concept of the “choreopolitical” (André Lepecki) and extending it into analysing related concepts such as the “postdramatic” (Hans-Thies Lehmann), performance and/as research, among others from Performance Studies scholarship as well as from First Physical Theatre Company’s pioneering legacy of production, pedagogy and research in making Phyical Theatre performance. Following from the notion that performance is both a site and a method of study/knowing, the research invites a rethinking of the relationship between art (performance), epistemology and the political, in the sense that performance becomes a way, not of simply re-presenting the political but, as its own way of knowing, actively questioning the very categories on which the political is premised. The argument for Physical Theatre as having nascent potential to invoke what I call “the power of the small” is analysed as a choreopolitical method and community of practice that has a generative capacity to produce the “intimate revolts” (Julia Kristeva) or body of questions that can perform the imaginative curiosities/forms required to create provocative, subversive, ethical, reflexive and charged performance. My argument is supported by critical commentary, insight, choreological analysis and reflection on the dramaturgical strategies and choreopolitics of selected commissioned choreographers and dance forms that extended FPTC’s manifesto and production between 1993 and 2015. My project has the following three goals: (i) to contextualise, conceptualise and identify key issues in the identity, pedagogy and performance ethos of Physical Theatre as a performance philosophy and form; (ii) to engage critically with the praxis of Physical Theatre within the contextual, cultural, historical and political relationships between Physical Theatre and other performance practices in South Africa; and (iii) to document, analyse and interpret selected claims, works and performance processes from the archive of FPTC’s repertory and training manifesto from 1993 to 2015. The research evaluates the political significance and consequence of FPTC’s heritage and legacy problematising constraints, possibilities, tensions, failures and proposing the hope of imaginative entanglements with practising freedoms

A cumulative index to a continuing bibliography on aeronautical engineering

This bibliography is a cumulative index to the abstracts contained in NASA-SP-7037(184) through NASA-SP-7037(195) of Aeronautical Engineering: A Continuing Bibliography. NASA SP-7037 and its supplements have been compiled through the cooperative efforts of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). This cumulative index includes subject, personal author, corporate source, foreign technology, contract, report number, and accession number indexes

The Postnatural Animal in Contemporary Art

The thesis uses art practice as a research method to propose novel characterisations of animal life. These characterisations aim to challenge an organicist image of non-human animals. The thesis considers animal bodies and behaviours as subject to aesthetic judgments that are underpinned by deeper ontological and epistemological commitments as to relations between nature and society, in which to be categorised as the former entails a series of privations in relation to the latter – the absence of freedom, subjectivity and creativity. Scholarly research on the history of the perception and conception of animal life within modernity, and subsequent challenges made to these within the contemporary humanities and contemporary art support and inform the practical enquiry. The thesis draws primarily here upon new materialist and post-humanist-oriented animal studies, and on scholarship surrounding the contemporary French artist, Pierre Huyghe. Positing the Anthropocene as a condition in which the distinction between human history and natural history has collapsed, the thesis argues for disassociating the concept ‘animal’ and the concept ‘nature’. The thesis attends to entanglements of animal worlds and cultural tropes where this equation fails. It proposes an an-organic and dis-harmonious animal life that attest to the end of nature and witnesses the dissonant and incomplete conditions of modernity. Both the written argument and the artistic outcomes propose novel ways to consider animals in relation to visuality. The thesis takes bio-art (i.e., art practice that incorporates living organisms) as of methodological value in this project where it engages the potentiality of animals themselves to challenge a received historical status. Furthermore, art practice is not just seen as a vehicle for depicting animal futures, but as a condition for liberating animals from nature. The thesis thus equates the postnatural animal with their becoming agents within artworks