Interactive Design of Postures for Articulated Character Dancing Animation

In this paper, an interactive platform is introduced that users can create dancing animation of models with various topologies, including humans, flowers, animals and etc. Two different physical models, the spring model without mass and elastic joint model are applied into system. In the interaction procedure, the models are set as spring model, which could propagate the force at one joint to the entire skeleton and drive the motion of the whole model correspondingly. And we have taken some measures to make the model stiffer and reduce ”super-elongated” springs. In the process of animating, we make good use of elastic joint model to sequence and polish the interpolation. In addition, we have simplified the elastic model to achieve smooth real-time animation. What is more, certain posture bases have been designed for users in advance, which greatly reduces the labor burden of creating individual postures and facilitates operating the system. After users have set proper dancing postures interactively through mouse action and stored these postures, our system will calculate the transition between those postures following dynamic theories, and produce the dancing animation soundly in real time. Moreover, some natural movements can be easily simulated with the system, such as the waving motion of trees in the winds, with the spring model and elastic joint model working together. CR Categories: I.3.5 [Computer Graphics]: Physically based modelling; I.3.7 [Computer Graphics]: Animation