Interactive physically-based control of visual phenomena

在过去的25年里，用于创建视觉媒体的工具取得了巨大的进步，扩展了视觉计算的范围和应用。这些工具的可访问性、可用性、实用性和表达性是可变的，自然地与伴随的视觉现象的复杂性保持一致。对动画师来说，逼真地制作人物、面孔、水、火、烟和动物的动画仍然是一项艰苦的任务，因为我们的工具倾向于模拟（“如果我推动这个，它会去哪里？”）过度控制（“我怎么让这个做那个？”）。此外，随着这一现象的复杂性增加，控制它的问题变得越来越困难。我的研究将集中在复杂视觉现象的交互控制上，目的是将影响现象行为的无数方式减少为一组以用户为中心的变量。这将使逼真的动画在娱乐以外的领域得到应用，包括训练、情感化身、逼真的虚拟和增强现实。

Advances in tools for the creation of visual media have seen huge growth in the past 25 years, expanding the range and applications of visual computing. The accessibility, usability, utility, and expressiveness of these tools is variable, naturally aligning to the complexity of the attendant visual phenomena. Realistically animating characters, faces, water, fire, smoke, and animals remains a painstaking task for animators, since our tools have favoured simulation ("If I push this, where will it go?") over control ("How do I get this to do that?"). Furthermore, as the complexity of the phenomenon increases, the problem of controlling it becomes ever more difficult. My research will focus on the interactive control of complex visual phenomena, with the aim of reducing the myriad ways that affect the behaviour of a phenomenon into a small set of user-centred variables. This will enable the application of realistic animation in areas beyond entertainment, including training, emotional avatars, and realistic virtual and augmented reality.