A Silly Idea For Animations

[Jens]

I just wonder if anyone had the following idea already and tried to implement it with the Houdini toolset. Now from the bits of insight and I had and my bits of work in the cg industry, as much as possible even smaller studios use mocap data. It's cheap to create decent animation compared to keyframing. However not always is the timeframe sufficient for mocap nor is it easily applicable. Many keyframed animations lack dynamics to make it convincing (coulnd't help noticing it on the the procedual girl movie.. in particular that muscular monster ).

Here is an idea that might be of some use: We could sort make an aproximation of something such as an arm and desribe it as Pt1 element (first order lag element, basically meaning it has a slight delay before it reacts to a force) or even more complex elements if it should suit the animated object. Now we animate the character with keyposes. To interpolate the animation between these keyframes we make use of PDI controller or alike with the keyframes as goal for the controller.

I have done similar things to design controllers for roboter arms and simulate their dynamic behaviour. Could it work for more inorganic things and help animators ? it seems to me that Houdini has all the tools with the CHOPs set to prototype such an idea. Besides the closed loop control simulation is fairly well explored with all the numerical models involved.

Unfortunally I have little time currently but possibly would investigate in that area around xmas. If anyone has done so before however and is willing to share the outcome there would be no need to do so.

And to think ahead a bit.. possibly it could be used to sort of filter mocap data to make it fit better, if the mocap data doesn't quite match to the proportions / masses of the animated creature.

[edward]

I can't say I really understand what you're getting at. However, it kinda sounds like the Cartoon Animation Filter. It wasn't too hard to do something similar in CHOPs using ideas from the paper.