Automatic tailoring and cloth modelling for animation characters.

The construction of realistic characters has become increasingly important to the production of blockbuster films, TV series and computer games. The outfit of character plays an important role in the application of virtual characters. It is one of the key elements reflects the personality of character. Virtual clothing refers to the process that constructs outfits for virtual characters, and currently, it is widely used in mainly two areas, fashion industry and computer animation. In fashion industry, virtual clothing technology is an effective tool which creates, edits and pre-visualises cloth design patterns efficiently. However, using this method requires lots of tailoring expertises. In computer animation, geometric modelling methods are widely used for cloth modelling due to their simplicity and intuitiveness. However, because of the shortage of tailoring knowledge among animation artists, current existing cloth design patterns can not be used directly by animation artists, and the appearance of cloth depends heavily on the skill of artists. Moreover, geometric modelling methods requires lots of manual operations. This tediousness is worsen by modelling same style cloth for different characters with different body shapes and proportions. This thesis addresses this problem and presents a new virtual clothing method which includes automatic character measuring, automatic cloth pattern adjustment, and cloth patterns assembling. There are two main contributions in this research. Firstly, a geodesic curvature flow based geodesic computation scheme is presented for acquiring length measurements from character. Due to the fast growing demand on usage of high resolution character model in animation production, the increasing number of characters need to be handled simultaneously as well as improving the reusability of 3D model in film production, the efficiency of modelling cloth for multiple high resolution character is very important. In order to improve the efficiency of measuring character for cloth fitting, a fast geodesic algorithm that has linear time complexity with a small bounded error is also presented. Secondly, a cloth pattern adjusting genetic algorithm is developed for automatic cloth fitting and retargeting. For the reason that that body shapes and proportions vary largely in character design, fitting and transferring cloth to a different character is a challenging task. This thesis considers the cloth fitting process as an optimization procedure. It optimizes both the shape and size of each cloth pattern automatically, the integrity, design and size of each cloth pattern are evaluated in order to create 3D cloth for any character with different body shapes and proportions while preserve the original cloth design. By automating the cloth modelling process, it empowers the creativity of animation artists and improves their productivity by allowing them to use a large amount of existing cloth design patterns in fashion industry to create various clothes and to transfer same design cloth to characters with different body shapes and proportions with ease

中国蘇州の古典園林における二つの「境界空間」 -外郭線と湖岸線による空間構成の研究

早大学位記番号:新8432早稲田大

Beads-on-String Model for Virtual Rectum Surgery Simulation

A beads-on-string model is proposed to handle the deformation and collision of the rectum in virtual surgery simulation. The idea is firstly inspired by the observation of the similarity in shape shared by a rectum with regular bulges and a string of beads. It is beneficial to introduce an additional layer of beads, which provides an interface to map the deformation of centreline to the associated mesh in an elegant manner and a bounding volume approximation in collision handling. Our approach is carefully crafted to achieve high computational efficiency and retain its physical basis. It can be implemented for real time surgery simulation application

Self-disclosure and SNS Platforms: The Impact of SNS Transparency and Culture

Self-disclosure on social networking platforms has attracted attention in Information Systems (IS) research. While studies have connected individual beliefs such as perceived privacy, perceived benefits, and cost to SNS use, less research has examined how characteristics of the social media platform itself shape SNS use. This study extends the literature by examining how the interplay between SNS transparency and individual culture affect user\u27s self-disclosure of personal information as well as factors that shape users’ perceptions on SNS transparency. Drawing on Accountability Theory, Communication Privacy Management Theory, and Culture Theory, we build a comprehensive, integrative model that offers a more holistic view of self-disclosure and the impact of the contextual factors on self-disclosure behaviors. The proposed study will use factorial survey (Vance et al. 2013) to collect data. This study will conceptually develop and operationalize a new construct—SNS transparency—that could help the researchers to gain better understanding of SNS-based self-disclosure and offers insights into how to integrate transparency into social media platforms

An improved stability criterion for linear time-varying delay systems

This paper considers the stability problem of linear systems with time-varying delays. A modified Lyapunov–Krasovskii functional (LKF) is constructed, which consists of delay-dependent matrices and double integral items under two time-varying subintervals. Based on the modified LKF, a less conservative stability criterion than some previous ones is derived. Furthermore, to obtain a tighter bound of the integral terms, the quadratic generalized free-weighting matrix inequality (QGFMI) is fully applied to different delay subintervals, which further reduces the conservatism of the stability criterion. Finally, three numerical examples are presented to show the effectiveness of the proposed approach

Patient Choice and Willingness Toward Gatekeepers as First-Contact Medical Institutions in Chinese Tiered Healthcare Delivery System: A Cross-Sectional Study

Introduction: Gatekeeping mechanism of primary care institutions (PCIs) is essential in promoting tiered healthcare delivery system in China. However, patients seeking for higher-level institutions instead of gatekeepers as their first contact has persisted in the past decade. This study aims to explain patients' choice and willingness and to provide potential solutions.Methods: A survey was conducted among residents who had received medical care within the previous 14 days. Patients' choice and willingness of PCIs for first contact together with influencing factors were analyzed using binary logistic regression.Results: Of 728 sampled patients in Hubei, 55.22% chose PCIs for first contact. Patients who are older, less educated, with lower family income, not living near non-PCIs, with better self-perceived health status, only buying medicines, and living in rural instead of urban area had significantly higher probability of choosing PCIs. As of willingness, over 90% of the patients inclined to have the same choice for their first contact under similar health conditions. Service capability was the primary reason limiting patients' choice of PCIs.Conclusions: The gatekeeper system did not achieve its goal which was 70% of PCIs among all kinds of institutions for first contact. Future measures should aim to improve gate-keepers' capability