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Hierarchical Evolution for Animating 3D Virtual Creatures

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Hierarchical Evolution for Animating 3D Virtual Creatures Title Hierarchical Evolution for Animating 3D Virtual Creatures Author(s) Chen, Tailin; Mu, Daosheng; Lu, Tainchi Proceedings : APSIPA ASC 2009 : Asia-Pacific Signal and Information Processing Association, 2009 Annual Summit Citation and Conference, 186-192 Issue Date 2009-10-04 Doc URL http://hdl.handle.net/2115/39671 Type proceedings APSIPA ASC 2009: Asia-Pacific Signal and Information Processing Association, 2009 Annual Summit and Note Conference. 4-7 October 2009. Sapporo, Japan. Oral session: 3D Computer Graphics and Applications (5 October 2009). File Information MP-L1-2.pdf Instructions for use Hokkaido University Collection of Scholarly and Academic Papers : HUSCAP Hierarchical Evolution for Animating 3D Virtual Creatures Tailin Chen, Daosheng Mu, and Tainchi Lu* Dept. of Computer Science and Information Engineering *National Chiayi University No. 300, University Rd., Chiayi, Taiwan 600, R.O.C. *E-mail: [email protected] Fax: +886-5-2717741 3D computer animations, a creature’s motion clip can be Abstract regarded as a series of frames animating by using continuous In this paper, we present an efficient approach to interpolations in between keyframes. It is not very easy to performing motion retargetting on a new creature’s skeleton directly control the body’s action of a creature’s object that is generated by taking advantage of hierarchical evaluation. A meta-skeleton is created by means of crossing over two source without any support of rigid structure; this is because the skeletons. We use the mutation and survival principles to surface is simply composed of hundreds of thousands of reproduce the next-generation skeleton to accomplish motion triangular polygons. As a result, a creature skeleton is taken transitions in a seamless and smooth manner. In addition to the into account to facilitate to the creature’s motions and actions. skeleton construction of a new creature by using the hierarchical Previous researches make use of joints and bones, and take evaluation, motion analysis is a required process to preserve the advantage of keyframes and interpolations to animate original motion attributes of the source creatures. Spacetime creature’s motions [1, 2]. The advantages of the above constraints, degree of freedom, and principal component implicit approaches [3, 4] are easy to use without taking analysis are taken into account in the proposed method in order time-consuming geometric calculations. Nowadays, most to prevent unexpected artifacts. The experimental results show that the proposed method enables motion behaviors of the target game companies and academic agencies purchase motion creature to be shown in between the two source creatures. As a capture systems for capturing creature’s real motions. About result, the proposed technique can effectively produce a new the human’s articulated motions, we can capture many virtual creature’s skeleton with plausible motion data, and is realistic continuous postures of humans, including dancing, applicable to working for 3D digital games and computer running, jumping, and so on. In contrast to humans’ motions animations. [5], it is obviously that we could not easily manipulate animals’ motions by using any motion capture systems. Keywords: 3D Computer Animation, Motion Retargetting, Motion Nevertheless, different motion capture systems have diverse Editing, Creature Skeleton, Evolutionary algorithms skeleton structures in distinct file formats. An art designer cannot merely assign the existing motion data to another different skeleton of a creature in case of different number of 1. Introduction joints or bones between two skeletons. On the other hand, With the high growth of modern entertainment, expense and time required to capture new motion data are three-dimensional computer graphics technologies play an considerably high; hence, we desire to reuse these motions as important role in digital games and computer animations in much as possible for a new creature, especially a virtual recent years. People are addicted to enjoy realistic 3D creature (Figure 1). Motion retargetting is a well-known computer animations, such as Shrek produced by technique to edit the existing motions to gain the desired DreamWorks; therefore, the 3D usages in computer results on another target creature. animations have been more and more popular than before. The proposed technique aims to produce a new virtual Conventional 2D image animations make use of many creature by means of employing hierarchical evaluation to pictures to continuously display at a time. In contrast, 3D cross over two different animal creatures, such as a horse and graphics animations take advantage of keyframes and a pteranodon, as shown in Figure 2. After crossing over the interpolations to display image frames in order. In the field of Figure 2: A new virtual creature generated by employing the hierarchical evaluation. Figure 1: Diverse virtual creatures existed in a fantasy world. genetic algorithm, we need to define a problem’s complexity in advance. In contrast, we do not require an understanding of the procedures or the complexity of a problem as long as we source creatures, a meta skeleton is constructed according to adopt genetic programming to perform a given computational its parents’ skeletons, and it comprises joints and bones of its task. In 1995, L. Gritz and J. K. Hahn apply genetic parents. We define a fitness evaluation function for mutating programming to motion control for articulated figures [12, the meta skeleton and construct a next-generation skeleton, 13]. They present an approach to articulated figure motion in namely a target skeleton. Finally, we align the target skeleton which motion tasks are defined in terms of goals and ratings. to the parents’ skeletons and accomplish motion transition [6, The purpose of employing genetic algorithm is to 7] in order to animate the new virtual creature. efficiently find out an optimal solution and obtain a more stable result. Its operation is similar to the natural selection 2. Related Works phrase; that is survival of the fittest. We expect to see an In the past few years, people are used to accept high adaptive generation after performing the survival competition diversities of 3D animated creatures because of the rapid for several times. Figure 3 shows the evolution process of growth of computer games and animations. We give the performing the hierarchical evaluation in our proposed Shrek 3 that was produced by the DreamWorks as an example. technique. By means of employing selection, crossover, The art designers have created two virtual animal creatures, mutation, and survivor operations, we can pick up more than namely donkey and dragon, and assigned flexible creature one creature to be source objects, and make good use of the motions to them. However, it is a time-consuming and high hierarchical evaluation to construct a new skeleton as the cost task to produce a new 3D animated creature by art target object. Note that no final solution can be obtained if we designers. Therefore, reuses of creatures’ motions after neglect any one step of the evolution process shown in Figure performing some specific operations are required in the field 3. of computer animations. We describe the technology of motion retargeting and the flow of hierarchical revolution in 3. An Approach to Generating Virtual Creatures the following subsections. In this section, we propose an approach to generating We look forward to viewing more and more diverse virtual creatures by means of motion retargeting and creatures with realistic motions nowadays. However, it is a hierarchical evaluation. time-consuming and high-cost job to capture new creature’s motions by means of using a motion capture system. In this paper, we devise a novel approach to combining motion 3.1 Steps for Accomplishing Motion Retargetting retargetting technology [8, 9, 10] and genetic programming A skeleton C s is regarded as a collection of joints, that for the sake of motion reusability. The genetic programming is Cs( R , j1 ,..., j i 1 , j i ,... j n 1 ), i {1,...., n 1}, where n is the is described in the following. number of joints, j0 is referred to as the root node R with the In 1992, Koza [11] proposed genetic programming that i is similar to genetic algorithm. Genetic algorithm can be representation R (,,,,,) tx t y t z r x r y r z , and j (,,) rx r y r z . classified as a kind of artificial evolution, and the common 3 3 (,,)tx t y t z and (,,)rx r y r z S represent translation and purpose is to find out an optimal solution for a high complex rotation vectors, respectively, corresponding to their problem. Its operation is similar to a Darwinian “survival of user-defined axes. Each joint has different degrees of freedom the fittest” approach. Therefore, the finer coming generations i can survive after many evolutions. When we start to employ (DOFs), for example, DOFs( R ) 6 and DOFs( j ) 3 . Figure 3: The steps of applying the hierarchical evaluation. Figure 4: The flowchart of performing the hierarchical evaluation. With respect to motion data Cm () t , it is defined as interested vertebrate animals to be the source objects. For example, we select a horse as the first source, and its skeleton m1 i 1 i n 1 Ct( ) ( Rtjt ( ), ( ),..., jtjt ( ), ( ),..., jtt ( )), {0,..., k } . s is C1 that is shown is Figure 5 (b). Figure 5 (c) shows m Each C() t is represented according to the translation and another animal creature, a dolphin, by loading its skeleton rotation in a geometric coordination at frame t . Suppose that s s s C2 into the system. Loading two skeletons C1 and C2 there are two distinct virtual creatures C1 and C2 with into the system is the first step to carry out the hierarchical s s different skeleton C1 and C2 , their skeleton structures evaluation. may not be completely identical; meanwhile, we are not able to directly transfer one motion to the other one via motion 3.2.2 Crossover retargetting.
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