Lecture 009

Interpolation Between Clips (Looping)

Dimensional Interpolation

Since we need to give the artists very flexible room for animation, we create customizable blend space.

To reduce computational complexity, barycentric coordinate is used for a point to blend 3 nearest animations.

Skeleton Mask Blending

To create animation component so that animation only affect parts of the body, skeleton mask is used.

For each vertex, we assign weights to each animation.

Additive Blending

Animations like head shaking usually stored coordinate changes rather than exact local coordinate. This way, we can make the animated figure to shake head in every pose.

Additive Blending is dangerous in a sense the vertex can go out of intended area. We might need to set a range for vertex to move and always clip them in a physically possible range.

Animation State Machine (ASM, Non-Looping)

We could package a blend space as a node in ASM.

Blending between Animation States

With circular looping animation, interpolation could produce natural result. However, for switching between non-looping animations in state machine, ease in and ease out is needed.

There are two major ways of doing easing:

• Smooth Transition: mathematically pleasing

• Frozen Transition: look more natural

Layered ASM (obsolete)

Layered ASM: multiple state machine each in charge different parts of the body, taking multi-modal input.

Animation Blend Tree

Like Expression Tree, we can blend animation clips using trees.

Terminal Node can be:

• Animation Clip

• Blend Space

• ASM

Non-Terminal Node can be:

• Binary LERP blend node

• Ternary (Rectangular) LERP blend node

• Binary Additive blend node

Game logic can control parameters in Blend Tree.

Inverse Kinematics (IK)

Forward Kinematics: the use of kinematics equations of a robot to compute the position of the end-effects from specified values for the joint parameters.

Inverse Kinematics: instead of artists tells each joints what to act, we want artist to tell what is the result of acting and computer will calculate how the joints should act.

Two Bone IK

We want the animated foot to always land on a non-flat ground. Since the length of bone is fixed, we can solve the triangle for the degree each joints should rotate.

In 2D, we have 2 solutions and only 1 is correct. In 3D we have infinitely many solutions. Therefore, we should use the walking direction to choose which solution we should use.

Milti-Joint IK

First, we can approach it by some reachability sanity checks.

Secondly, if reachable, we might also be limited by human joints' constraints.

The analytical method is too complex to solve, so we use heuristics algorithm.

• approximation

• global optimality not guaranteed

• iteration has maximum limit

• sacrificing optimality, accuracy, precision, completeness for speed

Cyclic Coordinate Decent (CCD)

Principle: from joint to joint, rotates the end-effector as close as possible to the target, solves IK problem in orientation space.

Reachability: algorithm can stop after certain number of iteration to avoid unreachable target

Constraints: angular limit is allowed, by checking after each iteration.

Optimized CCD (1)

To optimize the result, we insert a tolerance region for earlier iterations. This will result more distributed angles for each joints.

It has physical explanation: bending a spring.

Optimized CCD (2)

Under-damped Angle Scaling: each joint moves only a small amount toward the goal and distributes the movement accross multiple bones. It produce less abrupt joint changes and more smooth can causal poses for character movement.

We force root joints to have a angular constraints that is smaller than the leaf joints.

Forward And Backward Reaching Inverse Kinematics (FABRIK)

Instead of orientation space, we solve IK problem in position space.

Reachability: stop after certain number of iterations.

We can also add constraints to FABRIK.

IK with Multiple Constraints

But in reality, we need to have multiple constraints in animation. The computation is still huge.

This is because meeting one constraint may ruin the result of other.

We need Jacobian Matrix

Other IK Solutions

Physics-based:

• More natural

• need lots of computation

Position Based Dynamics (PBD):

• different from traditional physics-based

• better visual performance

• lower computational cost

Fullbody IK (FBIK) in UE5:

• XPBD (Extended PBD)

Challenges:

• self mesh collision avoidance

• IK with prediction during moving

• natural human behavior (deep learning) so that human is always in balance

Facial Animation

Interestingly, human is one of rare animal on earth that have complex facial expression system. So most animals can't interpret human expression. Dog, however, can interpret human expression.

To express facial animation, we use vertex animation with 28 key poses and blend within them.

Therefore, we should store vertex positions offset from neutral face.

Other Ways for Facial Animation

Combined Approach

In real engines, we still use some joint animation and combine it with vertex animation. This is because open and close mouth and eye movements are harder for vertex animation.

UV Texture for Cartoon

UV texture (especially normal map) should change to reflect folding of facial skin.

Muscle Model Animation

This is commonly used in offline film settings.

Unreal's Metahuman is the state-of-art for facial animation.

Animation Re-targeting

Problem: we need to re-target skeletons in different bone structure and different initial pose.

Re-Targeting from Standard Pose

Instead of applying re-targeting from local space, we need do re-targeting in relation of standard pose.

Handle Animation Track:

• Rotation track from source animation

• Translation from target skeleton

• Scale from source animation

Dislocation in Re-Targeting

When body size is different, we need to pay special attention to walking speed and displacement of character. Displacement curve needs to be scaled by the proportion of the pelvis.

IK in Re-Targeting

Moreover, re-targeting need some IK for different bones.

Different Bone Structure

We set anchor on source bone and divide the source bone into points. We try to match target bone to those points.

Unsolved Problems of Re-Targeting

Unsolved Problem:

• Self-mesh penetration

• Self contact constraints (hand can't clap together after re-target)

• balance of character

Morph Animation Re-Targeting

We need to insert constraint point and apply Laplace Operator.