A Review of Text-to-Animation Systems

Text-to-graphics systems encompass three types of tools: text-to-picture, text-to-scene and text-to-animation. They are an artificial intelligence application wherein users can create 2D and 3D scenes or animations and recently immersive environments from natural language. These complex tasks require the collaboration of various fields, such as natural language processing, computational linguistics and computer graphics. Text-to-animation systems have received more interest than their counterparts, and have been developed for various domains, including theatrical pre-production, education or training. In this survey we focus on text-to-animation systems, discussing their requirements, challenges and proposing solutions, and investigate the natural language understanding approaches adopted in previous research works to solve the challenge of animation generation. We review text-to-animation systems developed over the period 2001-2021, and investigate their recent trends in order to paint the current landscape of the field

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

Virtual Kung fu Sifu with Kinect

In this computer world almost everything is made available online. All possible systems are making use of the Internet and so does the learning systems. People willing to learn any kind of arts, but have no time would look for a tutor who would be available at his/her ease. An attempt to satisfy the same is the project that I’ve implemented. My focus is mainly on Kung fu an ancient form of Chinese Martial arts. Learning Kung fu needs a lot of practice and therefore demands having a professional kung fu master monitoring all the time, which is very expensive. Therefore, I have developed a new way of learning experience by creating a virtual Kung fu master normally called as Sifu. In this application, players can learn and perfect different styles and techniques with the help of virtual Sifu. All these styles have be pre recorded by a professional Sifu using a motion sensing input device called Kinect. This Virtual Trainer is designed to help users learn and improve their martial arts by comparing the user’s movements against those of a pre-recorded motion profile of Sifu by giving an immediate feedback to the user. Although many comparision algorithms exist I have chosen Dynamic Time Warping algorithm, which uses the Euclidean Distance formula. One of the main advantages of Dynamic Time Warping algorithm is, it overcomes the problems of motion analysis in speed and time

Incitement’s project : Inpactor

89 Páginas.​​Around the world, a great number of people have ideas on how to help their own communities. However, in most cases, these ideas never get the chance to be put into practice and to produce any real changes. To address this issue Incitement, a company founded in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, created a web platform called Inpactor. The platform's goal is to level the playing ground for all stakeholders in the charitable industry and is designed make collaborations between the private sector, NGOs, and volunteers easier and to create a lasting social impact. This is a written report for a 2D animated explainer video with a motion graphics style created to detail Inpactor. The video’s objective is to launch the platform and engage its audience. This report will present the objectives and theoretical framework behind the project as well as the research of the general and introductory history of animation and its evolution to what is known as motion graphics today. In addition, this report covers the creation of the video and the different stages of preproduction

Support tools for 3D game creation

Nowadays, tools for developing videogames are a very important part of the development process in the game industry. Such tools are used to assist game developers in their tasks, allowing them to create functional games while writing a few lines of code. For example, these tools allow the users to import the content for the game, set the game logic, or produce the source code and compile it. There are several tasks and components regarding the development of videogames that may become unproductive, therefore, it’s necessary to automate and/or optimize such tasks. For example, the programming of events or dialogs can be a task that consumes too much time in the development cycle, and a tedious and repetitive task for the programmer. For this reason, the use of tools to support these tasks can be very important to increase productivity and help on the maintenance of the various processes that involve the development of videogames. This dissertation aims to demonstrate the advantages of the use of these kind of tools during the development of videogames, presenting a case study involving the development of a Serious Game entitled Clean World.Atualmente, as ferramentas para o desenvolvimento de jogos são uma parte bastante importante de todo o processo de desenvolvimento. Estas ferramentas servem para assistir os criadores de jogos nas tarefas que realizam, permitindo-lhes a criação de jogos funcionais escrevendo poucas linhas de código. Desenvolver um videojogo sem a utilização de ferramentas especializadas é um processo complexo e que consome bastante tempo, daí a existência de ferramentas que permitem ao utilizador importar os conteúdos para o jogo, definir a lógica de jogo, produzir o código fonte e compilá-lo. Este tipo de software é normalmente utilizado por quem se dedica à criação de jogos como hobby, ou por profissionais que procuram otimizar o processo de desenvolvimento de jogos. Existem várias componentes ao nível do desenvolvimento de videojogos que se tornam pouco produtivas, se não forem automatizados e/ou otimizadas. Por exemplo, a programação de eventos ou de diálogos pode ser uma tarefa que consome demasiado tempo no ciclo de desenvolvimento, para além de ser uma tarefa entediante e repetitiva no ponto de vista do programador. Por este motivo, a utilização de ferramentas pode ser muito importante no que diz respeito ao aumento da produtividade e manutenção dos vários processos que envolvem o desenvolvimento de videojogos. Nesta dissertação pretendemos demonstrar as vantagens da utilização dessas mesmas ferramentas durante o desenvolvimento de videojogos, através da apresentação de um caso de estudo que envolve o desenvolvimento de um Serious Game intitulado Clean World. Em Clean World, foram identificadas determinadas tarefas que se mostraram demasiado repetitivas e entediantes quando programadas por inteiro, como é o caso da adição, modificação ou remoção de componentes como diálogos, quest ou items. Tendo em conta este problema concreto, foram criadas algumas ferramentas de forma a aumentar a produtividade no desenvolvimento do jogo, tornando tarefas repetitivas e entediantes em processos simples e intuitivos. O conjunto de ferramentas é constituído por: Item Manager, Quest Manager, Dialog Manager e Terrain Creator

Multimedia animation outsourcing : capstone proposal ...

Outsourcing in multimedia animation is a three phase research project in order to create a comparative analysis to obtain a hypothesis in three categories: 1. What are the comparative pros and cons of multimedia animation outsourcing? 2. What the benefits/disadvantages of multimedia animation outsourcing are in terms of costs, quality and time effectiveness? 3. What are the historical, current and future trends in multimedia animation? This research was conducted by literature investigation, qualitative interviews of several small to medium to large business in the beginning to advance states of this industry. Topics in history, industry trends, budget, saving time and cost, quality employee and social responsibilities, cultural issues and more were reviewed in this research. These companies either outsource or are outsourcers in the multimedia industries In-House, Onshore, Nearshore or Offshore. The purpose of this research is to obtain new information from these selectively chosen companies\u27 interviews for other companies who are, or planning to outsource, their animation to have another information resource. Multimedia Animation Outsourcing is considered the most current innovative technology and the wave of future in its learning phases. This research is an educational contribution to that technology

Realistic Lip Syncing for Virtual Character Using Common Viseme Set

Speech is one of the most important interaction methods between the humans. Therefore, most of avatar researches focus on this area with significant attention. Creating animated speech requires a facial model capable of representing the myriad shapes the human face expressions during speech. Moreover, a method to produce the correct shape at the correct time is also in order. One of the main challenges is to create precise lip movements of the avatar and synchronize it with a recorded audio. This paper proposes a new lip synchronization algorithm for realistic applications, which can be employed to generate synchronized facial movements among the audio generated from natural speech or through a text-to-speech engine. This method requires an animator to construct animations using a canonical set of visemes for all pair wise combination of a reduced phoneme set. These animations are then stitched together smoothly to construct the final animation