History of Motion Capture for Computer Character Animation

The use of motion capture for computer character animation is relatively new, having begun in the late 1970’s, and only now beginning to become widespread. Motion capture is the recording of human body movement (or other movement) for immediate or delayed analysis and playback. Motion capture for computer character animation involves the mapping of human motion onto the motion of a computer character. To get convincing motion for the human characters, Disney studios traced animation over film footage of live actors playing out the scenes. This method, called rotoscoping, has been successfully used for human characters ever since.The rotoscoping was invented by max fleischer in 1915.The first cartoon character has to be rotoscope was “koko the clown”.He want to use koko to convinced the big studio in the new process for the project.Walt Disney use the rotoscoping technique in 1937 to create motion of human characteristic in snow white.The decision of using rotoscoping technique is realistic human motion. In 1970’s it began to be feasible to animate characters by computer, animators adapted traditional techniques,includingrotoscoping.There is several name in the motion capture history;

Pioneers of Motion Capture

Eadweard Muybridge (1830 – 1904) – pioneer photographer of the moving image

Étienne-Jules Marey – First person to analyze human and animal motion with video

Harold E. “Doc” Edgerton (1903-1990) -High Speed stroboscopic photography

Max Fleischer (1915) – Rotoscoping

Lee Harrison III (1960’s) – Scanimation

Walt Disney – Multiplane Camera

The motion capture problems

The goal of motion capture is to record the movement of a performer (typically,but not always,human) in a compact and usable manner.Computer graphics and computer vision usually abstract the body into a small number of rigid segments that rotate relative to one another.The motion capture problem we consider therefore must have the following form: given a single stream of video observations of a performer, compute a 3D skeletal representation of the motion of sufficient quality to be useful for animation.

The specific challenges of animation make the problem even tougher.

- Unlike applications such as recognition and surveillance, animation does care about small details.

- Jitter and wobbles often come from uncertainty in computations,

- The importance of high frequencies means that filtering is not a viable tool for noise removal at video sampling rates.

- The unpredictability and unusual motions that we need to capture limit the strength of the models we can apply.

As computer hardware continues to improve, it is often hard for even the latest software to actually take advantage of the latest innovations. This means that the most sophisticated computers are generally not being pushed to their full potential. While they can run the newest software with astonishing smoothness and speed, this well within the ability of older computers as well.

Automobile technology operates in a similar manner. The latest and most powerful cars typically use technology that isn’t helpful on normal roads. There is almost no practical use for the kind of horsepower that delivers speeds that would guarantee you a trip to the county jail. While there are some niche markets where the cutting edge of performance is legitimately practical, such as race cars and trucks used for carrying equipment, but the typical vehicle owner will never find a legitimate use for such horsepower. Instead, many people who have no realistic use for it purchase costly and unreasonably powerful cars as status symbols.

This tradition can be seen in the progression of computer technology as well. Advanced computer equipment will deliver considerable but essentially gratuitous differences in performance. There are people that will pay untold sums of money to obtain computer hardware that totally outpaces the demands of available software. These users like to show off with unique builds that they believe will deliver ideal computer performance. Among members of this community, competition can run rampant as everyone tries to get the newest and fastest hardware configured to deliver supreme performance capability.

The tricks these fanatical users use to compare their first-class PCs are typically referred to as benchmarking. Computer benchmarking is a method of determining the performance capacity of hardware based on a constant set of variables. For example, a gamer could look at average frame rates while playing a specific game at a certain resolution. This is one kind of benchmark. Some hardware companies will disseminate benchmark statistics as a way to promote the performance of their product. This helps customers figure out which parts to get in the future.

There are also specific programs that are used just for benchmarking. For the most powerful parts, this is the only practical way to check their performance at full capacity. Since even new software does not challenge the latest hardware, these programs are made for the sole purpose of stressing your PC. Rapid calculations and other activities are used to produce comparative statistics by which advanced hardware can be judged.

This may seem to be a peculiar pursuit for many reasonable users. Why buy pricey computer hardware that has no real practical function? The answer is in the competitive nature of the computer hardware enthusiast. For some people, nothing gets the blood pumping like a water-cooled behemoth that attains fantastic benchmarks. The system will probably remain functional for a very long time too. Future programs will run with ease

This insular collective explores the great unknown. They investigate the performance of advanced hardware before most consumer programs get the chance. This allows for the dissemination of useful statistics that might help in future technical support applications. It also helps practical users make wise choices about future hardware upgrades. Most of these advanced pieces of hardware will soon be sold at a much lower price. As a result of this information, the normal user will be able to purchase the hardware the gives the best performance on their favorite software.

Concept of computer generated images and their application

Computer generated images (known as CGI) have become very popular over the past two decades, and their importance and use will increase even further in the future because of their wide applicability in various fields. In the area of movies and films in general CGI has become an essential tool for filmmakers to bring their visions to the screen, be it by creating computer generated characters, props, sets, or just simplifying the process of image and sound editing. Film production (“Filmproduktion”) has been made faster and more efficient in the postproduction phase, offering an unprecedented level of freedom and quality.

The success of 3D computer animation and CGI in general started in the early 90s, when software bundles and processing power got more affordable even for smaller companies, and since then it turned into an accepted art form by itself. Over the years the technology evolved further and further, lowering the barrier between art and technology, and even allowing these two extremes to blend seamlessly.

Creation of 3D graphics

The creation of CGI and computer animation requires the use of specialized software products. Several bundles have established on the market, and it is mainly a question of personal preference which one to pick. After all the biggest factor in creating convincing digital worlds is the artist himself, whereas the software is merely the tool to transfer his creativity onto the screen.

As graphics software became more user-friendly and intuitive, the process of creating CGI started to resemble its real-world counterparts, like painting, sculpting, photography and filmmaking. The area of computer animation for example requires the same steps of “real world” filmmaking, with the addition of modeling sets, props and characters first. Bringing a mass of “digital clay” into shape to form a convincing character (or any other object or location to be shown, for that matter) is the initial step. Then cameras, lights and other entities are arranged in the virtual space, and animated if necessary. Computer animation might be called the digital successor to the classic Harryhausen-type stop-motion animation, although many other ways of animating virtual objects and characters (like physical simulation or motion-capturing techniques) have evolved over the years. The last step is called “rendering” and describes the process of collecting all information of the scene and light setup to process and output the final image through the lens of a virtual camera, either in the form of still frames, or a series of frames which create the illusion of movement.

Television, film production and commercials

Computer animation and three-dimensional visualization (“Visualisierung”) is widely used in television, commercials and film production. The “small screen” has proven to be the perfect field for experimenting with newly developed technology and concepts, and many artists working in the area of television and commercials have made their way to the movie business. With software bundles getting cheaper and more accessible, independent artists and filmmakers seized the opportunity to create their own films and short films, a development, which gave the visual quality of films an enormous boost in the mid 90s. In the area of film production computer animation slowly started replacing hand-made models and puppets, and even the genre of animated films has gotten a digital counterpart.

The area of commercials has grown into other branches like industrial documentations (“Industriefilm”) and corporate video (“Imagefilm”), and besides entertainment computer animation is also used in the fields of education, interactive media (“3D Online”) and military application.

Scientific visualization

Computer animation produced to present meteorological data, medical imaging, industriefilm, architecture and technology.

Product design and engineering

Designers and engineers use special CAD (computer aided design) software for designing, developing and manufacturing consumer and industrial products. Product visualization extensively uses modern graphics technology and with the help of computers, designs can be rotated, cut and manipulated even before getting manufactured. This greatly helps engineers visualize the product that they are designing.

Copyright information…. This article is free for reproduction but must be reproduced in its entirety; live links & this copyright statement must be included.