Automatic rigging and animation of 3D characters

  • Authors:
  • Ilya Baran;Jovan Popović

  • Affiliations:
  • Massachusetts Institute of Technology;Massachusetts Institute of Technology

  • Venue:
  • ACM SIGGRAPH 2007 papers
  • Year:
  • 2007

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Abstract

Animating an articulated 3D character currently requires manual rigging to specify its internal skeletal structure and to define how the input motion deforms its surface. We present a method for animating characters automatically. Given a static character mesh and a generic skeleton, our method adapts the skeleton to the character and attaches it to the surface, allowing skeletal motion data to animate the character. Because a single skeleton can be used with a wide range of characters, our method, in conjunction with a library of motions for a few skeletons, enables a user-friendly animation system for novices and children. Our prototype implementation, called Pinocchio, typically takes under a minute to rig a character on a modern midrange PC.