Professional Documents
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Visualization
Lecture 15
Animation
History of animation
http://gapminder.org
Attribution of causality
Michotte demonstration
Timing affects the perceived cause and effect
Tendency to construct narratives, anthropomorphize elements
http://cogweb.ucla.edu/Discourse/Narrative/michotte-demo.swf
Attribution of causality
Variables of animation
Size
Shape
Color and shading
Position
Speed
Viewpoint and perspective
Secondary variables: sound, ...
Traditional animation
Each frame represented as a layer of painted cels
Background, characters, moving and still parts of each character
Parts of the scene that dont change (e.g., background) do not need to
be redrawn for each frame
Traditional animation
Storyboarding
Sequence of stills with descriptions of the action
Maps out key events in the story, representative poses
Key framing
Draw the important frames as line drawings
Description of motion between the key frames
Inbetweening
Draw all of the frames between the key frames
Traditional animation
Painting
Copy the line drawings to the cels
Color the cels
Storyboard
Keyframing
Inbetweening
Painting
Storyboard
Keyframing
Interpolation
Rendering
3D geometry
Simple rendering
Add textures
Computer animation
Replace painting with rendering
Replace much of the manual inbetweening with computer
simulation and parameter interpolation
Models have various parameters:
Control points or vertices (positions, normals, colors, textures)
Parameters controlling pose, shape, or movement (joint angles,
deformation, trajectories)
Scene parameters (lights, camera)
Computer animation
Inbetweening via parameter interpolation
A set of n parameters defines an n-dimensional state space
One pose defines a point in the state space
The animation defines a path through the state space
Start with the parameters at an initial point in the state space
Move the parameters along a state space path and re-render until the
animation is complete
Motion
Forward simulation, pose-to-pose interpolation
Behavior
Crowd behaviors, automated responses
Principles of animation
Focus attention on the main character
Make sure the audience sees what they should see
Appeal to and engage the audience
Cartoon physics
10 principles proposed by Disney
Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnston, The Illusion of Life: Disney Animation
John Lasseter, Principles of Traditional Animation Applied to 3D Computer Animation
Motion blur
Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnston, The Illusion of Life: Disney Animation
John Lasseter, Principles of Traditional Animation Applied to 3D Computer Animation
Timing
Define the weight, size, and personality of objects by adjusting
the spacing of actions
Spend the right amount of time preparing for, delivering, and
following up on each action
Too much time and the audiences attention wanders
Too little and they may miss the action
Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnston, The Illusion of Life: Disney Animation
John Lasseter, Principles of Traditional Animation Applied to 3D Computer Animation
Anticipation
Catch the audiences eye, prepare
them for next action
Show the windup
Tell the audience what you are going
to do before you do it
Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnston, The Illusion of Life: Disney Animation
John Lasseter, Principles of Traditional Animation Applied to 3D Computer Animation
Staging
Present the idea so that it is unmistakably clear
Stage actions, personalities, expressions, moods
Direct the audiences attention in the scene
Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnston, The Illusion of Life: Disney Animation
John Lasseter, Principles of Traditional Animation Applied to 3D Computer Animation
Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnston, The Illusion of Life: Disney Animation
John Lasseter, Principles of Traditional Animation Applied to 3D Computer Animation
Exaggeration
Accentuate the essence of an idea via the design and action
Exaggerate geometric deformation and timing
Arcs
Use smooth paths in the animation state space
Smooth paths provide more natural motion and animation
Move the parameters along smooth trajectories (e.g., splines)
Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnston, The Illusion of Life: Disney Animation
John Lasseter, Principles of Traditional Animation Applied to 3D Computer Animation
Secondary action
Show the action of an object resulting from another action
Makes things more believable, but mustnt distract the audience
Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnston, The Illusion of Life: Disney Animation
John Lasseter, Principles of Traditional Animation Applied to 3D Computer Animation
Appeal
Create actions and designs the audience enjoys watching
Physics-based animation
Motion and behavior can be simulated
Physics can be used to model
Mechanics: Gravity, momentum, collisions, friction
Fluid mechanics: Flow, viscosity, drag, etc.
Deformation: Flexibility, elasticity
Fracture: How and when things break
Video
30 frames per second (1 hr = 108,000 frames)
Games
60 frames per second (1 hr = 216,000 frames)
In real-time
Flexible
Cartoon UIs:
Solidity
Solid drawing (squash and stretch)
objects arrive from off screen or grow from a point
menus and arrows transform smoothly from a button to an open menu
transfer of momentum as objects collide
Motion blur
connect old and new locations
Dissolves
when changing object layering
Bay-Wei Chang and David Ungar, Animation: from cartoons to the user interface
In Proceedings of UIST 93
Cartoon UIs:
Exaggeration
Anticipation
objects preface movement with small, quick contrary movement
Follow through
objects come to a stop and vibrate into place
Bay-Wei Chang and David Ungar, Animation: from cartoons to the user interface
In Proceedings of UIST 93
Cartoon UIs:
Reinforcement
Slow in, slow out
for object movement, resizing, and dissolving
Arcs
objects travel along curves when moving non-interactively
Bay-Wei Chang and David Ungar, Animation: from cartoons to the user interface
In Proceedings of UIST 93
Gnutellavision
[Yee et al.]
Ka-Ping Yee et al. Animated Exploration of Graphs with Radial Layout, Proceedings of InfoVis 01
http://people.ischool.berkeley.edu/~rachna/courses/infoviz/gtv
Hybrid solution?
Coarse segmentation: by object
Finer segmentation: by action
Colleen Kehoe et al., Rethinking the evaluation of algorithm animations as learning aids: an observational study
International Journal of Human-Computer Studies, 2001
Motion paths
Trajectories/transitions in a static image