Resources

Computer Animation and Motion Capture

Books
Žára, J. et al. Moderní počítačová grafika. Computer Press. 1998.
Chapters: 17. Počítačová animace, 18. Virtuální realita
Brief outline of computer animation subject-matter. Mentions about Kochanek-Bartels and Catmul-Rom splines, articulated structures, forward and inverse kinematics and colision detection.
Foley, J. D. et al. Computer Graphics, Principles and Practice. Addison-Wesley. 1990.
Chapters: 21. Animation, 20. Advanced Modeling Techniques
About animation generally. Outline of conventional animation process, use of quaternions for orientation interpolation and technical aspects of computer animation.
Watt, A. & M. Advanced Animation and Rendering Techniques. Addison-Wesley 1992.
Magnenat-Thalmann, N. et al. State-Of-The-Art in Computer Animation: Proceedings of Computer Animation '89. Springer Verlag. 1989.
Moon Ryul Jung (Editor), et al. Motion Capture. A K Peters Ltd. 2002.
Menache, A. Understanding Motion Capture for Computer Animation and Video Games. Morgan Kaufmann Publishers. 1999.
Magnenat-Thalmann, N. – Thalmann, D. Modelling and Motion Capture Techniques for Virtual Environments: International Workshop, Captech'98, Geneva. Springer Verlag. 1999.
Badler, N. I. – Phillips, C. B. – Lynn Webber, B. Simulating Humans: Computer Graphics Animation and Control. Oxford University Press. 1997.
Books by Watt, A. - Policarpo, F.
3D Games: Real-Time Rendering and Software Technology, Volume 1. Addison-Wesley. 2000.
3D Games (Volume 2). Addison-Wesley. 2003.
Books Online
Parent, R. Computer Animation: Algorithms and Techniques. Morgan Kaufmann. 2001.
/outdated draft/ Online
An outdated draft of the book online is missing some figures and with poorly formated math expressions that are sometimes impossible to read. Still a valuable source of information. The book starts with history of conventional animation followed by extensive hardware and recording technology. Interesting topics in the following chapters are:
  • Chapter 3: Coordinate spaces in rendering pipeline, round-off error considerations for repeated transformations.
  • Chapter 4 (Low-level animation): Useful reparametrizations of a curve, several ways to orientation interpolation including quaternions, smooth interpolation between multiple key values of orientation. Within morphing techniques there is a simple method how to assign parts of an object to respective bones in its skeleton.
  • Chapter 5 (High-level animation): Articulated figure structures and manipulation (simple C source samples), forward and inverse kinematics (Jacobian pseudoinversion). Basic physics for rigid motion and dynamics, technique for flexible body dynamics. Behavioral and emergent systems – particles, flocks.
Especially the physics (summarized in an appendix) is written very clear and understandable. Unfortunately the most related chapter about character modeling and animation is only in the paper version of the book.
Press, W. H. – Saul, A. T. – Vetterling, W. T. – Flannery, B. P. Numerical Recipes in C: The Art of Scientific Computing. 2nd ed. Cambridge University Press. 1992.
Online
Invaluable book of numerical methods for programmers. Principles with source codes in C.
Biomechanics Books
Books by R. McNeill Alexander. et al.
The Human Machine. Columbia University Press. 1992.
Principles of Animal Locomotion. Princeton Univ Pr. 2003.
Books by Zatsiorsky, M. V.
Kinematics of Human Motion. Human Kinetics Pub. 1998.
Kinetics of Human Motion. Human Kinetics Pub. 2002.
Books by Allard, P. et al.
Three-Dimensional Analysis of Human Movement. Human Kinetics Pub. 1995.
Three-Dimensional Analysis of Human Locomotion. John Wiley & Son Ltd. 1998.
Books by Muybridge, E.
Muybridge's Complete Human and Animal Locomotion: New Volume 1 (Reprint of original volumes 1-4). Dover Pubns. 1979
The Human Figure in Motion. Dover Pubns. 1989.
The Male and Female Figure in Motion: 60 Classic Sequences. Dover Pubns. 1984.
Animals in Motion. Dover Pubns. 1957.
Horses and Other Animals in Motion. Dover Pubns. 1985.
Journals
Course Notes
Motion Capture: Pipeline, Applications, and Use. SIGGRAPH 2002 course notes #28.
Basic course. Motion capture history, technology and types of MC devices, MC pipeline, good and bad points of skeletal representation [Gleicher]. The most valuable part is contribution by Davis about captured motion analysis and recognition. Advantages of MC data are presented, processing of raw data (filtering, interpolation, etc.) and interesting future applications. Another nice paper by Belland inspires how to construct a very inexpensive puppet of an animal worn by human for motion capture. Finally some MC and character animation Maya tutorials follow.
Character Setup From Rig Mechanics to Skin Deformations: A Practical Approach. SIGGRAPH 2002 course notes #30.
Making Motion Capture Useful. SIGGRAPH 2001 course notes #51.
online
Ideas, keypoints: Goal is to catch essence of the motion, not details – postprocessing, abstraction in motion representation and character models. Captured motion will never be better then the actor is! What is visual tracking from video record. Sample data and communication sheets with MC studio. Raw motion data processing and principles of skeleton construction from marker set. Intro to motion retargetting and computer puppetry. Important aspects to preserve in retargetting are usually postions of end-effectors, joint angles and root position respectively.
Motion Editing: Principles Practice and Promise. SIGGRAPH 2000 course notes #26.
online materials
Character Motion Systems. SIGGRAPH 1994 course notes #9.
online
Quite an old and shallow text about motion capture and related issues.
Papers
Gleicher, M. Animation from Observation – DRAFT.
BibTeX entry
First chapter of a book that will be published "one day". Very useful to see the distinction between motion capture and computer animation and to understand what motion capture really is – only a part of the process of creating animation, recording a motion from the real world. This motion usually needs to be further processed.
Gleicher, M. Animation from Observation: Motion Capture and Motion Editing. Computer Graphics 1999.
BibTeX entry
Very nice Gleicher's paper gives an overview what is actually MC all about, its role in animation and a relation to computer vision.
Multon, F. – France, L. – Cani-Gascuel, M-P. – Debunne, G. Computer Animation of Human Walking: a Survey. The Journal of Visualization and Computer Animation. 1999.
BibTeX entry
Yabe, T. – Tanaka, K. Similarity Retrieval of Human Motion As Multi-stream Time Series Data. 1999.
BibTeX entry
Courses

Special computer graphics seminar (PGR005)

Selected presentations
Update: 20. 10. 2004