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A Software Pipeline for 3D Animation Generation Using Mocap Data and Commercial Shape Models

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A Software Pipeline for 3D Animation Generation Using Mocap Data and Commercial Shape Models A Software Pipeline for 3D Animation Generation using Mocap Data and Commercial Shape Models Xin Zhang, David S. Biswas and Guoliang Fan School of Electrical and Computer Engineering Oklahoma State University Stillwater, Oklahoma, United States {xin.zhang, david.s.bisaws, guoliang.fan}@okstate.edu ABSTRACT Additionally, high-quality motion capture (mocap) data We propose a software pipeline to generate 3D animations by and realistic human shape models are two important compo- using the motion capture (mocap) data and human shape nents for animation generation, each of which involves a spe- models. The proposed pipeline integrates two animation cific skeleton definition including the number of joints, the software tools, Maya and MotionBuilder in one flow. Specif- naming convention, hierarchical relationship and underlying ically, we address the issue of skeleton incompatibility among physical meaning of each joint. Ideally, animation software the mocap data, shape models, and animation software. Our can drive a human shape model to move and articulate ac- objective is to generate both realistic and accurate motion- cording to the given mocap data and optimize the deforma- specific animation sequences. Our method is tested by three tion of the body surface with natural smoothness, as shown mocap data sets of various motion types and five commer- in Fig. 1. With the development of computer graphics and cial human shape models, and it demonstrates better visual the mocap technology, there are plenty of mocap data and realisticness and kinematic accuracy when compared with 3D human models available for various research activities. three other animation generation methods. However, due to their different sources, there is a major gap between the mocap data, shape models and animation soft- ware, which often makes animation generation a challenging Categories and Subject Descriptors task. There are three skeleton definitions involved for an- H.2.8 [Information Systems]: Database Applications— imation generation which are from the mocap data, shape image database; I.6.8 [Computing Methodologies]: Types models, and software build-in skeleton. The incompatibil- of Simulation—animations, visual ity among those skeletons often make synthesized animation sequences unrealistic, inaccurate or even distorted. General Terms Experiment, Performance Motion Capture Data 3D Animation Keywords Software 3D animation generation, Human motion, MoCap data Human Shape Model Human Motion Animation 1. INTRODUCTION Figure 1: Animation generation using animation soft- Vision-based human motion analysis is an active research ware, mocap data and 3D shape models. field due to its wide practical applications such as biomet- The goal of this work is to propose a 3D motion-specific rics, human-computer interface, image and video retrieval. animation framework which improves both kinematic accu- Usually, an important prerequisite of this kind of research is racy and visual realisticness. A new software pipeline is pre- a large amount high-quality motion-specific animation data sented to overcome the problem of skeleton incompatibility for algorithm training that reflect various imaging condi- among the mocap data, commercial shape models and ani- tions, e.g., view-points and body-shapes. Given difficulties mation software. The proposed pipeline employs two popu- on collecting real-world training data, several computer an- lar animation software, Maya and MotionBuilder, into one imation software, such as Maya MotionBuilder (Autodesk), flow. In the pipeline, the skeleton from the mocap data and Poser (Curious Labs), have been adopted for animation is employed as the reference one. Accordingly, the human generation due to their efficiency, flexibility and low-cost. shape model is re-defined by using the reference skeleton that is connected with the software skeleton via a skeleton mapping technique. We test our pipeline using several com- Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for mercial human shape models and various mocap data sets personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are from different sources. Our method achieves very promis- not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies ing results. Using the proposed pipeline, we can generate bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. To copy otherwise, to natural-looking animations that accurately reflect the un- republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific derlying motion data. This work would lead to a useful re- permission and/or a fee. CIVR ’10, July 5-7, Xi’an China search tool for researchers in the field of vision-based human Copyright c 2010 ACM 978-1-4503-0117-6/10/07 ...$10.00. motion analysis. Application Fields • Maya is high-end professional 3D computer modeling software that supports detailed graphical representa- Research Topics tion. Given its powerful and complex capabilities, it re- Video Image and Browsing Video quires a steep learning curve for animation generation. Detection Tracking Retrieval Moreover, Maya needs additional software to handle Segmenta 3D Joints various often-used mocap data formats (AMC/ASF, tion 3D Human Animation Estimation BVH, C3D etc.). Biometrics Data People Identification Gesture Activity • MotionBuilder (MB) is specially designed software Recognition Recognition for 3D character animation with powerful tools to han- Visual Pose dle mocap data and various camera settings. It also Surveillance Estimation provides well-designed physical constraints and opti- Video Indexing mization algorithms for motion-realistic animation. It Human Computer Interface is often encumbered by the skeleton incompatibility between shape models and mocap data. Figure 2: Related research topics and application fields 2.3 Virtual Environment involving 3D human animation data. Several synthetic datasets and simulation tools have been developed as testing beds for computer vision research, es- pecially in the field visual surveillance. By building a vir- tual world, synthetic visual data can be acquired by freely placed cameras that could include multiple human activities and interactions in various scenarios. This work belongs to the second category. We want to pro- vide an efficient and flexible way for animation generation that accommodates arbitrary mocap data and any commer- cial human shape models. (a) (b) (c) Table 1: Brief summary of related research and their Figure 3: 3D human animations using (a) rigid body animation data generation methods. modeling [34], (b) body mesh animation (Maya) [31], and (c) virtual environment [33]. Research Topics Methods Detection and Segmentation 2. RELATED WORK Li et al.[15] body part super-quadratics 3D human animations are widely used in various research Lin et al.[16] body part super-quadratics topics, including detection, segmentation, tracking, estima- Schlogl et al.[27] body mesh animation Tracking tion, recognition and retrieval, shown in Fig. 2. There are Black et al [5] body mesh animation three different ways to create human animations: rigid body Desurmont et al. [9] virtual environment modeling, body mesh animation, and virtual environment Sminchisescu and Triggs [32] body part super-quadratics (Fig. 3). All these techniques have been employed in the Urtasun and Fua [34] body part super-quadratics human related vision research, as summarized in Table 1. Pose Estimation Agarwal and Triggs [3] body mesh animation (Poser) 2.1 Rigid Human Body Modeling Elgammal and Lee [10] body mesh animation (Poser) Guo and Qian [13] body mesh animation (Maya) The human body is assumed to be composed of several Sigal et al [29] body part super-quadratics hierarchically connected rigid parts. Each body part can be Shakhnarovich et al. [28] body mesh animation (Poser) modeled as a rigid super-quadratics such as cuboid or cylin- Sminchisescu et al. [31] body mesh animation (Maya) der. This method is simple with less parameters and it does 3D Motion Estimation not involve any special animation related software. However, Canton-Ferrer et al. [6] body part super-quadratics the model can only provide a very rough synthesization of Mundermann et al. [19] scanned human shape Wei et al. [35] body part super-quadratics human shape and animations. Zhang et al. [36] body mesh animation (proposed) Recognition 2.2 Body Mesh Animation Chen et al. [7] body mesh animation Body mesh animation can be achieved by graphic pro- Park et al. [21] body part super-quadratics gramming and commercial software. Given large amount Peng and Qian [23] body mesh animation (Maya) of high-quality mocap data, 3D animation software can be Ragheb et al. [25] body mesh animation (MB) used to create various human animation sequences with good Retrieval Deng et al. [8] body mesh animation quality and high efficiency. Three animation software tools Godil and Ressler [12] scanned human shape are often used: Poser, Maya and MotionBuilder. Pawar et al. [22] body part super-quadratics • Poser is easy-to-use software that provides a collection Visual Surveillance Qureshi and Terzopoulos [24] virtual environment of human models and many types of motions. But it Taylor et al. [33] virtual environment is not easy to directly incorporate data or models from other sources. 3. PRELIMINARY AND KEY IDEAS Shape Model 3D animation generation requires mocap data, a human Mocap Shape Model Shape shape model and certain animation software. Data Skeleton Mesh • Mocap Data have two elements: the skeleton and mo-
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