CAREER: Motion Transformations for Animation

计算机动画是一种强大的交流媒介，具有解释、教育或保留的潜力。然而，由于制作难度和成本，动画在娱乐之外的潜力在很大程度上尚未开发。尽管目前的技术水平为专业动画师提供了制作艺术品的工具，但对于那些没有相当时间和天赋的人来说，它几乎没有帮助。我们的愿景是，电脑动画将成为一种广泛使用的交流媒介，广大用户将选择在这种媒介中分享他们的信息，and that the availability可用of this medium媒体willimpact影响how we educate教育students学生.互联网带宽的广泛可用性为创作者提供了分享动画的机制：缺少的是创建动画的工具。动画的力量可以被更广泛地使用，特别是在教育方面的影响，如果我们能够降低制作的障碍，使媒体民主化。如果我们能够设计出在转换过程中保留原始作品所需属性的技术，那么转换动作的技术可以通过允许用户利用他人的工作来启用此类工具.运动变换的时空约束方法可以提供这种技术，如果它得到更充分的发展。本提案提出了一个教师职业发展计划，致力于无处不在的动画的愿景。研究部分将开发技术，使动画的更广泛的使用，教育部分将使用动画进行教育，并更好地为计算机科学家提供视觉媒体。我们的努力是为新的动画工具创造使能技术，使那些不熟练的动画师更容易使用。我们提出了一些新用途的运动转换技术，例如将动作应用于新角色或新环境。挑战在于，如何使转换既能满足新的需求，又能保持原始的理想属性。我们以前的工作介绍了时空约束的方法来运动变换。从数学上讲，该方法提出了运动变换作为一个约束优化问题：什么运动满足指定的需求，但最好地保留了原来的运动？与大多数动画技术不同，时空约束同时考虑整个运动，而不是单独计算时间中的瞬间。这需要为每个运动计算解决单个大型数值问题。迄今为止，我们的工作表明时空约束方法是一种可行的方法来解决计算机动画中的重要问题。发展计划的研究部分是利用我们的初步成果与时空限制的方法，实现更广泛的目标，民主化的动画。具体而言，工作提出了改进的方法，以提高其可靠性和适用性的数学基础，开发新类型的运动变换，实现系统，提供运动变换到我们的目标用户，并演示如何使用这些新类型的工具，用于生产effectivevisual messages.the教育部分的发展计划包括三个部分。首先，该计划通过开发新课程和为各级学生提供研究和项目机会，满足威斯康星州大学图形和动画专业学生的培训需求。第二，该计划建议利用动画来改进教学法：为课堂和推广活动制作材料。第三，该计划建议通过与技术社区的联系来帮助促进动画技术的发展。

Computer Animation is a powerful medium for communication, with potential to explain, educate, orentertain. However, the potential of animation beyond entertainment is largely untapped because of thedifficulty and cost in producing it. While the state of the art provides tools for expert animators to craftworks of art, it offers little help for those without considerable time and talent.Our vision is that computer animation will be a widely used medium for communication, that a wide rangeof users will choose to share their messages in this medium, and that the availability of this medium willimpact how we educate students. The widespread availability of internet bandwidth offers the mechanismfor creators to share animation: what is missing are the tools to create it.Our premise is that:1. The power of animation can be more broadly used, with particular impact in education, if we can lowerthe barriers to its production with tools that democratize the medium.2. Techniques for transforming motions can enable such tools by allowing users to leverage the work ofothers if we can devise technologies that retain the desirable properties of the original duringtransformation.3. The spacetime constraints approach to motion transformation can provide this technology if it is morefully developed.This proposal presents a faculty career development plan committed to the vision of ubiquitous animation.The research component will develop technologies that enable a wider range of uses of animation, and theeducation component will use animation for education and better prepare computer scientists to work withvisual media.The overall goal of the research effort is to create enabling technologies for new animation tools that aremore accessible to those who are not skilled animators. We propose techniques for transforming motions tonew uses, for example applying an action to a new character or new environment. The challenge is to createtransformations that both meet the new needs, yet preserve the desirable properties of the original. Our prior work introduced the spacetime constraints approach to motion transformations. Mathematically, theapproach poses motion transformation as a constrained optimization problem: what motion meets thespecified needs yet best preserves the original motion? Unlike most animation techniques, spacetimeconstraints consider entire motions simultaneously, rather than computing instants in time individually. This requires solving a single, large numerical problem for each motion computation. Our work to date shows the spacetime constraints approach is a viable approach for tackling important problems in computer animation. The research component of the development plan is to leverage our initial results with the spacetime constraints approach towards the broader goal of democratizing animation. Specifically, work is proposed to improve the mathematical foundations of the approach to enhance its reliability and applicability, to develop new types of motion transformations, to implement systems that provide motion transformations to our target users, and to demonstrate how these new types of tools can be used for the production of effectivevisual messages.The education component of the development plan consists of three parts. First, the plan addresses the needto train students at the University of Wisconsin in graphics and animation by developing new courses andproviding research and project opportunities for students at all levels. Second, the plan proposes to useanimation to improve pedagogy: by creating materials for classes as well as for outreach. Third, the planproposes to help foster the development of animation technology through outreach to the technicalcommunity.