Aesthetic Edits For Character Animation

Abstract

The utility of an interactive tool can be measured by how pervasively it is embedded into a user's work flow. Tools for artists additionally must provide an appropriate level of control over expressive aspects of their work while suppressing unwanted intrusions due to details that are, for the moment, unnecessary. Our focus is on tools that target editing the expressive aspects of character motion. These tools allow animators to work in a way that is more expedient than modifying low-level details, and offers finer control than high level, directorial approaches. To illustrate this approach, we present three such tools, one for varying timing (succession), and two for varying motion shape (amplitude and extent). Succession editing allows the animator to vary the activation times of the joints in the motion. Amplitude editing allows the animator to vary the joint ranges covered during a motion. Extent editing allows an animator to vary how fully a character occupies space during a movement - using space freely or keeping the movement close to his body. We argue that such editing tools can be fully embedded in the workflow of character animators. We present a general animation system in which these and other edits can be defined programmatically. Working in a general pose or keyframe framework, either kinematic or dynamic motion can be generated. This system is extensible to include an arbitrary set of movement edits.