New Animation Tool for Video Game Developers

museumpeace writes "Stuck for ideas about cheapest/fastest/most realistic rendering technology for that new video game you want to develop? Here is a great list of links and resources. The very latest is a tool mentioned on Technology Review which, if you feed it just a few dozen frames of a video of , for instance, Kurt Shilling pitching, can extrapolate a library of animated gestures or actions from just that sample. This new technique is already licensed to Electronic Arts. It was developed by Aaron Hertzman and Zoran Popovic and grew out of earlier work by Hertzman at NYU and a busy curriculum of computer graphics accomplishments by Popovic."

Curt not Kurt

[itchyArse]

It's Curt Schilling not Kurt.

Re:Curt not Kurt

[ifreakshow]

it will also work with Kurt Schilling but his curve isn't as impressive.

Re:Curt not Kurt

[museumpeace]

oops. I don't follow hockey very closely but I shouldda googled the name to make sure. Sorry Curt! RTFA is kinda hard for that long page of links but I found a few 404 errors. Papers that have gone missing can sometimes be dreded up via google. e.g. the cute pdf explaining inertia tensors [which you need if you are going to hurl a hummer across the field and want it to tumble realistically through the air] is at http://baba.astro.cornell.edu/inertiatensor.pdf

Re:Curt not Kurt

[itchyArse]

dude baseball .. not hockey you must be from canada

Re:Curt not Kurt

[museumpeace]

i forgot the ";?)"

full text

[Anonymous Coward]

Since the author didn't link to the actual registration required article [technologyreview.com] , here's the text:

Auto Animator

Prototype
November 2004

Animating a person's movements for a movie or video game can be costly and time consuming, requiring that actors be filmed with special cameras for every step and shrug. A new tool created by Zoran Popovic at the University of Washington and Aaron Hertzmann at the University of Toronto, however, can extrapolate a person's movements from a single sequence of motions. First, the sequence is used to train the system. Then the animator picks a new movement for the digital character by, say, changing the position of its hands and feet. The system then calculates the most probable corresponding positions of the rest of the body. Popovic says that a clip of only 20 or 30 frames is enough information to give the system a good sense of how a person tends to move. Popovic imagines that the technology would be particularly useful for animators who make sports video games based on actual players. In fact, the technology is currently licensed to Redwood City, CA-based Electronic Arts, a maker of video games.

(There are three stick figure images of a simple comuter model of a pitcher pitching with the path of the ball shown as a line.)

Re:full text

[FooAtWFU]

(There are three stick figure images of a simple comuter model of a pitcher pitching with the path of the ball shown as a line.)

A commuter model? I don't know; whether you're pitching a baseball in a subway or on the freeway, it sounds a little dangerous. Someone could get hurt.

Animators

[Ford Prefect]

Different techniques for generating computer game animation are always appreciated - animation can contribute hugely towards the realism of the game, making even basic character models appear 'alive', but (like audio) you can't exactly distill good animation into a few tech-spec bullet points.

For instance, System Shock 2's 3D character modelling was terrible, but its monsters became eerily lifelike (and far more scary) thanks to the motion-captured animation. Capturing 'real' movements as in motion capture and the video stuff as in the article is one thing, automatically generated parametric animation is another, something which may (or may not) revolutionise the gaming world.

Okay, it's not going to completely replace old-fashioned animation, but it can still be an intriguing way of gluing those 'phrases' together. I'm reminded of some of Ken Perlin's work [nyu.edu] in this - where simple stick-figures move in a much more 'real' manner than the near-photorealistic characters in many modern games. Apparently his faces [nyu.edu] were the inspiration for the facial animation system in Half-Life 2.

Oh, and incidentally, if anyone happens to be a game animator with a bit of free time, click on my signature's link. Greatly appreciated. :-)