Animation | EPFL Graph Search

Animation is the method by which are manipulated to create moving images. In traditional animation, images are drawn or painted by hand on transparent celluloid sheets to be photographed and exhibited on film. Today, many animations are computer animations made with (CGI). Stop motion animation, in particular claymation, has continued to exist alongside these other forms. Animation is contrasted with live-action film, although the two do not exist in isolation. Many moviemakers have produced films that are a hybrid of the two. As CGI increasingly approximates photographic imagery, filmmakers can easily composite 3D animations into their film rather than using practical effects for showy visual effects (VFX). General overview Computer animation can be very detailed 3D animation, while 2D computer animation (which may have the look of traditional animation) can be used for stylistic reasons, low bandwidth, or faster real-time renderings. Other common animation methods a

3D modeling of the human upper limb including the biomechanics of joints, muscles and soft tissues

The challenge in virtual human modeling is to achieve the representation of the main human characteristics with as much realism as possible. Such achievements would allow the simulation and/or analysis of many virtual situations involving humans. Simulation is especially useful to derive information from the models so as to predict and/or reproduce the behaviors that would be observed in real situations. Computer methods in visualization and simulation have thus great potential for advances in medicine. The processes of strength generation and motion coordination are some of these phenomena for which there is still much remaining to be understood. The human shoulder is also probably the articulation of the human body which deserves more than any other to be named "terra incognita". Investigations towards the biomechanical modeling and simulation of the human upper limb are therefore presented in this study. It includes thorough investigation into the musculoskeletal anatomy and biomechanics of the human upper limb, into the biomechanical constitutive modeling of muscles and soft tissues, and into the nonlinear continuum mechanics and numerical methods, especially the incremental finite element methods, necessary for their simulation. On this basis, a 3-D biomechanical musculoskeletal human upper limb model has been designed using the Visible Human Data provided by the U.S. National Library of Medicine, and applied to the dynamic musculoskeletal simulation of the human upper limb. This research has been achieved in the context of the EU ESPRIT Project CHARM, whose objective has been to develop a comprehensive human animation resource database and a set of software tools allowing the modeling of the human complex musculoskeletal system and the simulation of its dynamics, including the finite element simulation of soft tissue deformation and muscular contraction. An investigation towards the application of this knowledge for the realistic modeling and animation of the upper limb in computer animation is then presented. The anatomical and biomechanical modeling of the scapulo-thoracic constraint and the shoulder joint sinus cones are proposed and applied to the realistic animation, using inverse kinematics, of a virtual skeleton and an anatomic musculoskeletal body model.

EPFL1999

Human shoulder modeling including scapulo-thoracic constraint and joint sinus cones

Daniel Thalmann

In virtual human modeling, the shoulder is usually composed of clavicular, scapular and arm segments related by rotational joints. Although the model is improved, the realistic animation of the shoulder is hardly achieved. This is due to the fact that it is difficult to coordinate the simultaneous motion of the shoulder components in a consistent way. Also, the common use of independent one-degree of freedom (DOF) joint hierarchies does not properly render the 3-D accessibility space of real joints. On the basis of former biomechanical investigations, we propose an extended shoulder model including scapulo-thoracic constraint and joint sinus cones. As a demonstration, the model is applied, using inverse kinematics, to the animation of a 3-D anatomic muscled skeleton model

Elsevier2000

Semantics for virtual humans

Alejandra Garcia Rojas Martinez

Population of Virtual Worlds with Virtual Humans is increasing rapidly by people who want to create a virtual life parallel to the real one (i.e. Second Life). The evolution of technology is smoothly providing the necessary elements to increase realism within these virtual worlds by creating believable Virtual Humans. However, creating the amount of resources needed to succeed this believability is a difficult task, mainly because of the complexity of the creation process of Virtual Humans. Even though there are many existing available resources, their reusability is difficult because there is not enough information provided to evaluate if a model contains the desired characteristics to be reused. Additionally, the knowledge involved in the creation of Virtual Humans is not well known, nor well disseminated. There are several different creation techniques, different software components, and several processes to carry out before having a Virtual Human capable of populating a virtual environment. The creation of Virtual Humans involves: a geometrical representation with an internal control structure, the motion synthesis with different animation techniques, higher level controllers and descriptors to simulate human-like behavior such individuality, cognition, interaction capabilities, etc. All these processes require the expertise from different fields of knowledge such as mathematics, artificial intelligence, computer graphics, design, etc. Furthermore, there is neither common framework nor common understanding of how elements involved in the creation, development, and interaction of Virtual Humans features are done. Therefore, there is a need for describing (1) existing resources, (2) Virtual Human's composition and features, (3) a creation pipeline and (4) the different levels/fields of knowledge comprehended. This thesis presents an explicit representation of the Virtual Humans and their features to provide a conceptual framework that will interest to all people involved in the creation and development of these characters. This dissertation focuses in a semantic description of Virtual Humans. The creation of a semantic description involves gathering related knowledge, agreement among experts in the definition of concepts, validation of the ontology design, etc. In this dissertation all these procedures are presented, and an Ontology for Virtual Humans is described in detail together with the validations that conducted to the resulted ontology. The goal of creating such ontology is to promote reusability of existing resources; to create a shared knowledge of the creation and composition of Virtual Humans; and to support new research of the fields involved in the development of believable Virtual Humans and virtual environments. Finally, this thesis presents several developments that aim to demonstrate the ontology usability and reusability. These developments serve particularly to support the research on specialized knowledge of Virtual Humans, the population of virtual environments, and improve the believability of these characters.

EPFL2009

Semantics for virtual humans

Alejandra Garcia Rojas Martinez

EPFL2009

3D modeling of the human upper limb including the biomechanics of joints, muscles and soft tissues

EPFL1999