CAREER: Motion Transformations for Animation

计算机动画是一种强大的交流媒介，具有解释、教育或娱乐的潜力。然而，除了娱乐之外，动画的潜力在很大程度上还没有被开发出来，因为制作它的难度和成本都很高。虽然最先进的技术为专业动画师提供了制作艺术作品的工具，但它对那些没有足够时间和才华的人几乎没有帮助。我们的愿景是，计算机动画将成为一种广泛使用的交流媒介，越来越多的用户将选择在这种媒介上分享他们的信息，这种媒介的可用性将影响我们教育学生的方式。互联网带宽的广泛使用为创作者提供了分享动画的机制：缺少的是创作它的工具。我们的前提是：1.如果我们能够通过使媒介民主化的工具来降低动画制作的门槛，动画的力量可以得到更广泛的应用，特别是对教育的影响。变换运动的技术可以通过允许用户利用他人的工作来实现这类工具，如果我们能够设计出在变换过程中保留原始运动的所需属性的技术。运动变换的时空约束方法可以提供这项技术，如果它得到更充分的发展。这项提案提出了一个致力于无处不在动画愿景的教师职业发展计划。研究部分将开发能够使动画得到更广泛应用的技术，教育部分将把动画用于教育，并更好地为计算机科学家与视觉媒体合作做准备。研究的总体目标是为新的动画工具创造使能技术，使不熟练的动画制作者更容易接触到这些工具。我们提出了将动作转换为新用途的技术，例如将动作应用于新角色或新环境。挑战在于如何创造出既能满足新需求又能保持原有特性的变形。我们之前的工作将时空约束方法引入到运动变换中。在数学上，该方法将运动变换归结为一个约束优化问题：什么运动满足指定的需求又能最好地保留原始运动？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上的瞬间。这需要为每个运动计算解决一个单独的大型数值问题。到目前为止，我们的工作表明，时空约束方法是解决计算机动画中重要问题的可行方法。开发计划的研究部分是利用我们的初步成果，采用时空约束方法，实现动画民主化的更广泛目标。具体地说，建议改进该方法的数学基础，以提高其可靠性和适用性，开发新型动作变换，实施向我们的目标用户提供动作变换的系统，并演示如何使用这些新型工具来产生有效的视觉信息。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，满足了威斯康星大学对学生进行图形和动画培训的需求。其次，该计划建议使用动画来改进教学方法：通过为课堂和外展创建材料。第三，该计划建议通过与技术界的接触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.