“Capturing and Animating Skin Deformation” by Carnegie Mellon University

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Conference:


SIGGRAPH Video Review:


Track:


    21

Title:


    Capturing and Animating Skin Deformation

Company / Institution / Agency:


  • Carnegie Mellon University

Description:


    During dynamic activities, the surface of the human body moves in many subtle but visually significant ways: bending, bulging, jiggling, and stretching. We present a technique for capturing and animating those motions using a commercial motion capture system and approximately 350 markers. Although the number of markers is significantly larger than that used in conventional motion capture, it is only a sparse representation of the true shape of the body. We supplement this sparse sample with a detailed, actor-specific surface model. The motion of the skin can then be computed by segmenting the markers into the motion of a set of rigid parts and a residual deformation (approximated first as a quadratic trans-formation and then with radial basis functions). We demonstrate the power of this approach by capturing flexing muscles, high-frequency motions, and abrupt decelerations on several actors.

    Park, S.I., Hodgins, J.K. 2006. Capturing and Animating Skin Deformation in Human Motion. ACM Transactions on Graphics (SIGGRAPH 2006),25(3), 881-889.

Hardware:


    Vicon MX40 cameras for motion capture

Software:


    Maya software from Autodesk, Inc.
    Custom software for data cleaning and animation of deformations

Additional Contributors:


    Technical Direction: Sang Il Park, Jessica Hodgins

    Artistic Direction: Moshe Mahler

    Motion Capture: Justin Macey, Michael Lentine, AJ Dinsmore

    Music: Mark Mahler

    Supported in part by: National Science Foundation (IIS-0326322), Autodesk, Inc., Vicon Motion Capture Systems