The creative process of animating human movement

Abstract

The computer animation of articulated models such as human figures can be regarded as a complex synthesis task much like composing a musical piece or designing a new product. Developing computer animation tools requires a sound understanding of both this creative process as well as the animation task itself. Most current commercial animation packages focus on providing useful but low-level functions to create, modify and compose human movement. This paper proposes a hierarchical approach to human figure animation which incorporates knowledge on several levels about movement and motion processing in order to support the creative process and facilitate the motion specification task without taking control away from the animator. Two examples are given to illustrate this principle: a tool for animation of human locomotion, and motion signal processing techniques to adapt existing motion data.