Search

Hand motion capture data is now relatively easy to obtain, even for complicated grasps; however this data is of limited use without the ability to retarget it onto the hands of a specific character or robot. The target hand may differ dramatically in geometry, number of degrees of freedom (DOFs), or number of fingers. We present a simple, but effective framework capable of kinematically retargeting multiple human hand-object manipulations from a publicly available dataset to a wide assortment of kinematically and morphologically diverse target hands through the exploitation of contact areas. We do so by formulating the retarget operation as a non-isometric shape matching problem and use a combination of both surface contact and marker data to progressively estimate, refine, and fit the final target hand trajectory using inverse kinematics (IK). Foundational to our framework is the introduction of a novel shape matching process, which we show enables predictable and robust transfer of contact data over full manipulations while providing an intuitive means for artists to specify correspondences with relatively few inputs. We validate our framework through thirty demonstrations across five different hand shapes and six motions of different objects. We additionally compare our method against existing hand retargeting approaches. Finally, we demonstrate our method enabling novel capabilities such as object substitution and the ability to visualize the impact of design choices over full trajectories.

We have developed a simulation technique that uses non-linear finite element analysis and elastic fracture mechanics to compute physically plausible motion for three-dimensional, solid objects as they break, crack, or tear. When these objects deform beyond their mechanical limits, the system automatically determines where fractures should begin and in what directions they should propagate. The system allows fractures to propagate in arbitrary directions by dynamically restructuring the elements of a tetrahedral mesh. Because cracks are not limited to the original element boundaries, the objects can form irregularly shaped shards and edges as they shatter. The result is realistic fracture patterns such as the ones shown in our examples. This paper presents an overview of the fracture algorithm, the details are presented in our ACM SIGGRAPH 1999 and 2002 papers., Comment: 11 pages, 5 figures, 5 anc videos. Also available at: http://graphics.berkeley.edu/papers/Obrien-AFX-2000-12. arXiv admin note: substantial text overlap with arXiv:2303.02934

Objects that move in response to the actions of a main character often make an important contribution to the visual richness of an animated scene. We use the term "secondary motion" to refer to passive motions generated in response to the movements of characters and other objects or environmental forces. Secondary motions aren't normally the mail focus of an animated scene, yet their absence can distract or disturb the viewer, destroying the illusion of reality created by the scene. We describe how to generate secondary motion by coupling physically based simulations of passive objects to actively controlled characters.

In this paper, we introduce techniques for animating explosions and their effects. The primary effect of an explosion is a disturbance that causes a shock wave to propagate through the surrounding medium. This disturbance determines the behavior of nearly all other secondary effects seen in explosions. We simulate the propagation of an explosion through the surrounding air using a computational fluid dynamics model based on the equations for compressible, viscous flow. To model the numerically stable formulation of shocks along blast wave fronts, we employ an integration method that can handle steep gradients without introducing inappropriate damping. The system includes two-way coupling between solid objects and surrounding fluid. Using this technique, we can generate a variety of effects including shaped explosive charges, a projectile propelled from a chamber by an explosion, and objects damaged by a blast. With appropriate rendering techniques, our explosion model can be used to create such visual effects such as fireballs, dust clouds, and the refraction of light caused by a blast wave., Comment: 7 pages, 12 figures, anc videos, 22 citations. Alternative online location: http://graphics.berkeley.edu/papers/Yngve-AEX-2000-07

This paper describes a technique for using magnetic motion capture data to determine the joint parameters of an articulated hierarchy. This technique makes it possible to determine limb lengths, joint locations, and sensor placement for a human subject without external measurements. Instead, the joint parameters are inferred with high accuracy from the motion data acquired during the capture session. The parameters are computed by performing a linear least squares fit of a rotary joint model to the input data. A hierarchical structure for the articulated model can also be determined in situations where the topology of the model is not known. Once the system topology and joint parameters have been recovered, the resulting model can be used to perform forward and inverse kinematic procedures. We present the results of using the algorithm on human motion capture data, as well as validation results obtained with data from a simulation and a wooden linkage of known dimensions., Comment: 8 pages, 8 figures, 4 tables

Children's drawings have a wonderful inventiveness, creativity, and variety to them. We present a system that automatically animates children's drawings of the human figure, is robust to the variance inherent in these depictions, and is simple and straightforward enough for anyone to use. We demonstrate the value and broad appeal of our approach by building and releasing the Animated Drawings Demo, a freely available public website that has been used by millions of people around the world. We present a set of experiments exploring the amount of training data needed for fine-tuning, as well as a perceptual study demonstrating the appeal of a novel twisted perspective retargeting technique. Finally, we introduce the Amateur Drawings Dataset, a first-of-its-kind annotated dataset, collected via the public demo, containing over 178,000 amateur drawings and corresponding user-accepted character bounding boxes, segmentation masks, and joint location annotations.

In this paper, we augment existing techniques for simulating flexible objects to include models for crack initiation and propagation in three-dimensional volumes. By analyzing the stress tensors computed over a finite element model, the simulation determines where cracks should initiate and in what directions they should propagate. We demonstrate our results with animations of breaking bowls, cracking walls, and objects that fracture when they collide. By varying the shape of the objects, the material properties, and the initial conditions of the simulations, we can create strikingly different effects ranging from a wall that shatters when it is hit by a wrecking ball to a bowl that breaks in two when it is dropped on edge. This paper received the SIGGRAPH 99 Impact Award., Comment: 10 pages, 14 figures. This paper received the SIGGRAPH 99 Impact Award. Alternate location: http://graphics.berkeley.edu/papers/Obrien-GMA-1999-08

Computer animations often lack the subtle environmental changes that should occur due to the actions of the characters. Squealing car tires usually leave no skid marks, airplanes rarely leave jet trails in the sky, and most runners leave no footprints. In this paper, we describe a simulation model of ground surfaces that can be deformed by the impact of rigid body models of animated characters. To demonstrate the algorithms, we show footprints made by a runner in sand, mud, and snow as well as bicycle tire tracks, a bicycle crash, and a falling runner. The shapes of the footprints in the three surfaces are quite different, but the effects were controlled through only five essentially independent parameters. To assess the realism of the resulting motion, we compare the simulated footprints to human footprints in sand., Comment: 11 pages, 11 figures, 12 ancillary videos, previous version published in Graphics Interface 1998. Michael A. J. Sweeney award for best student paper. Alternative location: http://graphics.berkeley.edu/papers/Sumner-ASM-1999-03

Human figures have been animated using a variety of geometric models including stick figures, polygonal models, and NURBS-based models with muscles, flexible skin, or clothing. This paper reports on experimental results indicating that a viewer's perception of motion characteristics is affected by the geometric model used for rendering. Subjects were shown a series of paired motion sequences and asked if the two motions in each pair were the same or different. The motion sequences in each pair were rendered using the same geometric model. For the three types of motion variation tested, sensitivity scores indicate that subjects were better able to observe changes with the polygonal model than they were with the stick figure model., Comment: 13 pages, 9 figures. A previous version of this paper (v1) appeared in Graphics Interface 1997. This version of the paper (v2) appeared in IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics, 4(4):101-113, December 1998. Alternate locations of this paper: http://graphics.berkeley.edu/papers/Hodgins-PHM-1998-12 and https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/765325

This paper describes algorithms for the animation of men and women performing three dynamic athletic behaviors: running, bicycling, and vaulting. We animate these behaviors using control algorithms that cause a physically realistic model to perform the desired maneuver. For example, control algorithms allow the simulated humans to maintain balance while moving their arms, to run or bicycle at a variety of speeds, and to perform a handspring vault. Algorithms for group behaviors allow a number of simulated bicyclists to ride as a group while avoiding simple patterns of obstacles. We add secondary motion to the animations with spring-mass simulations of clothing driven by the rigid-body motion of the simulated human. For each simulation, we compare the computed motion to that of humans performing similar maneuvers both qualitatively through the comparison of real and simulated video images and quantitatively through the comparison of simulated and biomechanical data., Comment: Alternate location: http://graphics.berkeley.edu/papers/Hodgins-AHA-1995-08 8 pages, figures

In this paper we describe a method for modeling the dynamic behavior of splashing fluids. The model simulates the behavior of a fluid when objects impact or float on its surface. The forces generated by the objects create waves and splashes on the surface of the fluid. To demonstrate the realism and limitations of the model, images from a computer-generated animation are presented and compared with video frames of actual splashes occurring under similar initial conditions., Comment: Alternative location: http://graphics.berkeley.edu/papers/Obrien-DSS-1995-04

This paper presents a novel approach to the problem of semantic parsing via learning the correspondences between complex sentences and rich sets of events. Our main intuition is that correct correspondences tend to occur more frequently. Our model benefits from a discriminative notion of similarity to learn the correspondence between sentence and an event and a ranking machinery that scores the popularity of each correspondence. Our method can discover a group of events (called macro-events) that best describes a sentence. We evaluate our method on our novel dataset of professional soccer commentaries. The empirical results show that our method significantly outperforms the state-of-theart., Comment: Appears in Proceedings of the Twenty-Eighth Conference on Uncertainty in Artificial Intelligence (UAI2012)