The effect of tendons on foot skin deformation

Anatomical human models are usually divided into layers including skin, muscle and skeleton. In spite of the realistic animation of the models that can be achieved, and the realistic appearance of the model determined by the underlying muscles and skeleton, the role of tendons in determining the deformation of skin surface has not been well addressed. This paper presents an approach for modeling human foot tendons and determines their influence on the skin layer deformation. Our goal is to model deformation of the tendons such that a realistic foot simulation can be obtained. An anatomical foot model including skin, muscle, tendon and skeleton layers is adopted. The appearance of the skin layer is determined based on the underlying layers. To allow interactive deformation of the tendon models, the axial deformation technique is adopted. Given the position of the foot and the basis function, the position of the data points that control the axial curve is updated. To allow more accurate computation of the data point positions, a method that estimates the basis function based on real data obtained from foot images is also presented. Experimental results showed that the axial deformation technique can model deformation of the foot tendons with satisfactory visual realism. With the tendon deformation, the visual realism on the skin deformation is also enhanced. c © 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.