SCA 11: Eurographics/SIGGRAPH Symposium on Computer Animation

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https://diglib.eg.org/handle/10.2312/425

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Mathematical Foundation of the Optimization-based Fluid Animation Method
(The Eurographics Association, 2011) Erleben, Kenny; Misztal, Marek Krzysztof; Bæren, J. Andreas; A. Bargteil and M. van de Panne
We present the mathematical foundation of a fluid animation method for unstructured meshes. Key contributions not previously treated are the extension to include diffusion forces and higher order terms of non-linear force approximations. In our discretization we apply a fractional step method to be able to handle advection in a numerically simple Lagrangian approach. Following this a finite element method is used for the remaining terms of the fractional step method. The key to deriving a discretization for the diffusion forces lies inrestating the momentum equations in terms of a Newtonian stress tensor. Rather than applying a straightforward temporal finite difference method followed by a projection method to enforce incompressibility as done in the stable fluids method, the last step of the fractional step method is rewritten as an optimization problem to make it easy to incorporate non-linear force terms such as surface tension.
Content Retargeting Using Parameter-Parallel Facial Layers
(The Eurographics Association, 2011) Kholgade, Natasha; Matthews, Iain; Sheikh, Yaser; A. Bargteil and M. van de Panne
Facial motion retargeting approaches often transfer expressions by establishing correspondences between shared units of motion, such as action units, or spatial correspondences of landmarks between the source actor and target character faces. When the actor and character are structurally dissimilar, shared units of motion or spatiallandmarks may not exist, and subtle styles of performance may differ. We present a method to deconstruct the content of an actor's facial expression into three parameter-parallel layers using a composition function, transfer the content to equivalent parameter-parallel layers for the character, and reconstruct the character's expression using the same composition function. Our algorithm uses the same parameter-parallel layered model of facial expression for both the actor and character, separating the content of facial expressions into emotion, speech, and eye-blink layers. Facial motion in each layer is embedded in simplicial bases, each of which encodes semantically significant configurations of the face. We show the transfer of facial motion capture and video-based tracking of the eyes and mouth of an actor to a number of faces with dissimilar facial structure and expressive disposition.
Procedural Fluid Modeling of Explosion PhenomenaBased on Physical Properties
(The Eurographics Association, 2011) Kawada, Genichi; Kanai, Takashi; A. Bargteil and M. van de Panne
We propose a method to procedurally model the fluid flows of explosion phenomena by taking physical properties into account. Explosion flows are always quite difficult to control, because they easily disturb each other and change rapidly. With this method, the target flows are described by control paths, and the propagation flows are controlled by following these paths. We consider the physical properties, which are the propagations of thepressure generated by the ignition, the detonation state caused by the pressure and the fuel combustions. Velocity, density, temperature and pressure fields are generated procedurally, and the fluid flows are computed from these four fields based on grid-based fluid simulations. Using this method, we can achieve a fluid motion that closelyresembles one generated solely through simulation. This method realizes the modeling of flows controlled frame by frame and follows the flow's physical properties.
Simulating Heterogeneous Crowd BehaviorsUsing Personality Trait Theory
(The Eurographics Association, 2011) Guy, Stephen J.; Kim, Sujeong; Lin, Ming C.; Manocha, Dinesh; A. Bargteil and M. van de Panne
We present a new technique to generate heterogeneous crowd behaviors using personality trait theory. Our formulation is based on adopting results of a user study to derive a mapping from crowd simulation parameters to the perceived behaviors of agents in computer-generated crowd simulations. We also derive a linear mapping between simulation parameters and personality descriptors corresponding to the well-established Eysenck Threefactor personality model. Furthermore, we propose a novel two-dimensional factorization of perceived personality in crowds based on a statistical analysis of the user study results. Finally, we demonstrate that our mappings and factorizations can be used to generate heterogeneous crowd behaviors in different settings.
Optimization for Sag-Free Simulations
(The Eurographics Association, 2011) Twigg, Christopher D.; Kacic-Alesic, Zoran; A. Bargteil and M. van de Panne
A common problem during the first few seconds of a cloth, hair, or flesh simulation is that the mesh sags under gravity, which can undo the work of hours of careful modeling. The typical response of increasing the stiffness of the mesh is unsatisfactory as it increases the computational cost of simulation and adversely impacts the quality of the resulting motion. Modelers are accustomed to creating geometry as it is found in the real world, whichalready includes the effect of gravity. We propose a fast and effective approach for optimizing parameters such as spring rest lengths so that the artistically modeled shape represents the equilibrium after the mesh has settled under gravity. This eliminates sagging, preserves the quality of motion, and is intuitive for the artists.
Real-Time Classification of Dance Gesturesfrom Skeleton Animation
(The Eurographics Association, 2011) Raptis, Michalis; Kirovski, Darko; Hoppe, Hugues; A. Bargteil and M. van de Panne
We present a real-time gesture classification system for skeletal wireframe motion. Its key components include an angular representation of the skeleton designed for recognition robustness under noisy input, a cascaded correlation-based classifier for multivariate time-series data, and a distance metric based on dynamic timewarping to evaluate the difference in motion between an acquired gesture and an oracle for the matching gesture. While the first and last tools are generic in nature and could be applied to any gesture-matching scenario, the classifier is conceived based on the assumption that the input motion adheres to a known, canonical time-base: a musical beat. On a benchmark comprising 28 gesture classes, hundreds of gesture instances recorded using the XBOX Kinect platform and performed by dozens of subjects for each gesture class, our classifier has an average accuracy of 96:9%, for approximately 4-second skeletal motion recordings. This accuracy is remarkable given the input noise from the real-time depth sensor.
SPH Granular Flow with Friction and Cohesion
(The Eurographics Association, 2011) Alduán, Iván; Otaduy, Miguel A.; A. Bargteil and M. van de Panne
Combining mechanical properties of solids and fluids, granular materials pose important challenges for the design of algorithms for realistic animation. In this paper, we present a simulation algorithm based on smoothed particle hydrodynamics (SPH) that succeeds in modeling important features of the behavior of granular materials. These features are unilateral incompressibility, friction and cohesion. We extend an existing unilateral incompressibility formulation to be added at almost no effort to an existing SPH-based algorithm for fluids. The main advantages of this extension are the ease of implementation, the lack of grid artifacts, and the simple two-way coupling with other objects. Our friction and cohesion models can also be incorporated in a seamless manner in the overall SPHsimulation algorithm.
Graph-based Fire Synthesis
(The Eurographics Association, 2011) Zhang, Yubo; Correa, Carlos D.; Ma, Kwan-Liu; A. Bargteil and M. van de Panne
We present a novel graph-based data-driven technique for cost-effective fire modeling. This technique allows composing long animation sequences using a small number of short simulations. While traditional techniques such as motion graphs and motion blending work well for character motion synthesis, they cannot be trivially applied to fluids to produce results with physically consistent properties which are crucial to the visual appearance offluids. Motivated by the motion graph technique used in character animations, we introduce a new type of graph which can be applied to create various fire phenomena. Each graph node consists of a group of compact spatialtemporal flow pathlines instead of a set of volumetric state fields. Consequently, achieving smooth transitions between discontinuous graph nodes for modeling turbulent fires becomes feasible and computationally efficient.The synthesized particle flow results allow direct particle controls which is much more flexible than a full volumetric representation of the simulation output. The accompanying video shows the versatility and potential power of this new technique for synthesizing realtime complex fire at the quality comparable to production animations.
Biomechanically-Inspired Motion Path Editing
(The Eurographics Association, 2011) Lockwood, Noah; Singh, Karan; A. Bargteil and M. van de Panne
We present a system for interactive kinematic editing of motion paths and timing that employs various biomechanical observations to augment and restrict the edited motion. Realistic path manipulations are enforced by restricting user interaction to handles identified along a motion path using motion extrema. An as-rigid-as-possibledeformation technique modified specifically for use on motion paths is used to deform the path to satisfy the usermanipulated handle positions. After all motion poses have been adjusted to satisfy the new path, an automatic timewarping step modifies the timing of the new motion to preserve the timing qualities of the original motion.This timewarp is based on biomechanical heuristics relating velocity to stride length and path curvature, as well as the preservation of acceleration for ballistic motion. We show that our system can be used to quickly and easily modify a variety of locomotive motions, and can accurately reproduce recorded motions that were not used during the editing process.
A Simple Finite Volume Method for Adaptive Viscous Liquids
(The Eurographics Association, 2011) Batty, Christopher; Houston, Ben; A. Bargteil and M. van de Panne
We present the first spatially adaptive Eulerian fluid animation method to support challenging viscous liquid effects such as folding, coiling, and variable viscosity. We propose a tetrahedral node-based embedded finite volume method for fluid viscosity, adapted from popular techniques for Lagrangian deformable objects. Applied in an Eulerian fashion with implicit integration, this scheme stably and efficiently supports high viscosity fluids while yielding symmetric positive definite linear systems. To integrate this scheme into standard tetrahedral meshbased fluid simulators, which store normal velocities on faces rather than velocity vectors at nodes, we offer two methods to reconcile these representations. The first incorporates a mapping between different degrees offreedom into the viscosity solve itself. The second uses a FLIP-like approach to transfer velocity data between nodes and faces before and after the linear solve. The former offers tighter coupling by enabling the linear solver to act directly on the face velocities of the staggered mesh, while the latter provides a sparser linear system and a simpler implementation. We demonstrate the effectiveness of our approach with animations of spatially varying viscosity, realistic rotational motion, and viscous liquid buckling and coiling.
Hybrid Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics
(The Eurographics Association, 2011) Raveendrany, Karthik; Wojtanz, Chris; Turk, Greg; A. Bargteil and M. van de Panne
We present a new algorithm for enforcing incompressibility for Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics (SPH) by preserving uniform density across the domain. We propose a hybrid method that uses a Poisson solve on a coarse grid to enforce a divergence free velocity field, followed by a local density correction of the particles. This avoids typical grid artifacts and maintains the Lagrangian nature of SPH by directly transferring pressures onto particles.Our method can be easily integrated with existing SPH techniques such as the incompressible PCISPH method as well as weakly compressible SPH by adding an additional force term. We show that this hybrid method accelerates convergence towards uniform density and permits a significantly larger time step compared to earlier approaches while producing similar results. We demonstrate our approach in a variety of scenarios with significant pressuregradients such as splashing liquids.
A Level-set Method for Skinning Animated Particle Data
(The Eurographics Association, 2011) Bhatacharya, Haimasree; Gao, Yue; Bargteil, Adam; A. Bargteil and M. van de Panne
In this paper, we present a straightforward, easy to implement method for particle skinning-generating surfaces from animated particle data. We cast the problem in terms of constrained optimization and solve the optimization using a level-set approach. The optimization seeks to minimize the thin-plate energy of the surface, while stayingbetween surfaces defined by the union of spheres centered at the particles. Our approach skins each frame independently while preserving the temporal coherence of the underlying particle animation. Thus, it is well-suited for environments where particle skinning is treated as a post-process, with each frame generated in parallel. We demonstrate our method on data generated by a variety of fluid simulation techniques and simple particle systems.
Mass and Momentum Conservation for Fluid Simulation
(The Eurographics Association, 2011) Lentine, Michael; Aanjaneya, Mridul; Fedkiw, Ronald; A. Bargteil and M. van de Panne
Momentum conservation has long been used as a design principle for solid simulation (e.g. collisions between rigid bodies, mass-spring elastic and damping forces, etc.), yet it has not been widely used for fluid simulation. In fact, semi-Lagrangian advection does not conserve momentum, but is still regularly used as a bread and butter method for fluid simulation. In this paper, we propose a modification to the semi-Lagrangian method in order to make it fully conserve momentum. While methods of this type have been proposed earlier in the omputational physics literature, they are not necessarily appropriate for coarse grids, large time steps or inviscid flows, all of which are common in graphics applications. In addition, we show that the commonly used vorticity confinement turbulence model can be modified to exactly conserve momentum as well. We provide a number of examples that illustrate the benefits of this new approach, both in conserving fluid momentum and passively advected scalars such as smoke density. In particular, we show that our new method is amenable to efficient smoke simulation with one time step per frame, whereas the traditional non-conservative semi-Lagrangian method experiences serious artifacts when run with these large time steps, especially when object interaction is considered.
Preview-based Sampling for Controlling Gaseous Simulations
(The Eurographics Association, 2011) Huangy, Ruoguan; Melekz, Zeki; Keyser, John; A. Bargteil and M. van de Panne
In this work, we describe an automated method for directing the control of a high resolution gaseous fluid simulation based on the results of a lower resolution preview simulation. Small variations in accuracy between low and high resolution grids can lead to divergent simulations, which is problematic for those wanting to achieve a desired behavior. Our goal is to provide a simple method for ensuring that the high resolution simulation matcheskey properties from the lower resolution simulation. We first let a user specify a fast, coarse simulation that will be used for guidance. Our automated method samples the data to be matched at various positions and scales in the simulation, or allows the user to identify key portions of the simulation to maintain. During the high resolution simulation, a matching process ensures that the properties sampled from the low resolution simulation are maintained. This matching process keeps the different resolution simulations aligned even for complex systems, and can ensure consistency of not only the velocity field, but also advected scalar values. Because the final simulation is naturally similar to the preview simulation, only minor controlling adjustments are needed, allowing a simplercontrol method than that used in prior keyframing approaches.
Real-time Facial Animation from Live Video Tracking
(The Eurographics Association, 2011) Rhee, Taehyun; Hwang, Youngkyoo; Kim, James Dokyoon; Kim, Changyeong; A. Bargteil and M. van de Panne
This paper describes a complete pipe-line of a practical system for producing real-time facial expressions of a 3D virtual avatar controlled by an actor's live performances. The system handles practical challenges arising from markerless expression captures from a single conventional video camera. For robust tracking, a localized algorithm constrained by belief propagation is applied to the upper face, and an appearance matching techniqueusing a parameterized generic face model is exploited for lower face and head pose tracking. The captured expression features then transferred to high dimensional 3D animation controls using our facial expression space which is a structure-preserving map between two algebraic structures. The transferred animation controls drive facial animation of a 3D avatar while optimizing the smoothness of the face mesh. An example-based face deformation technique produces non-linear local detail deformations on the avatar that are not captured in the movement of the animation controls.
Human Motion Reconstruction from Force Sensors
(The Eurographics Association, 2011) Ha, Sehoon; Bai, Yunfei; Liu, C. Karen; A. Bargteil and M. van de Panne
Consumer-grade, real-time motion capture devices are becoming commonplace in every household, thanks to the recent development in depth-camera technologies. We introduce a new approach to capturing and reconstructing freeform, full-body human motion using force sensors, supplementary to existing, consumer-grade mocap systems. Our algorithm exploits the dynamic aspects of human movement, such as linear and angular momentum, to providekey information for full-body motion reconstruction. Using two pressure sensing platforms (Wii Balance Board) and a hand tracking device, we demonstrate that human motion can be largely reconstructed from ground reaction forces along with a small amount of arm movement information.
Spacetime Vertex Constraints for Dynamically-based Adaptation of Motion-Captured Animation
(The Eurographics Association, 2011) O'Brien, C.; Dingliana, J.; Collins, S.; A. Bargteil and M. van de Panne
We present a novel technique for editing motion captured animation. Our iterative solver produces physicallyplausible adaptated animations that satisfy alterations in foot and hand contact placement with the animated character's surroundings. The technique uses a system of particles to represent the poses and mass distribution of the character at sampled frames of the animation. Constraints between the vertices within each frame enforce theskeletal structure, including joint limits. Novel constraints extending over vertices in several frames enforce the aggregate dynamics of the character, as well as features such as joint acceleration smoothness. We demonstrate adaptation of several animations to altered foot and hand placement.
A Puppet Interface for Retrieval of Motion Capture Data
(The Eurographics Association, 2011) Numaguchi, Naoki; Nakazawa, Atsushi; Shiratori, Takaaki; Hodgins, Jessica K.; A. Bargteil and M. van de Panne
Intuitive and efficient retrieval of motion capture data is essential for effective use of motion capture databases. In this paper, we describe a system that allows the user to retrieve a particular sequence by performing an approximation of the motion with an instrumented puppet. This interface is intuitive because both adults and children have experience playacting with puppets and toys to express particular behaviors or to tell stories with style and emotion. The puppet has 17 degrees of freedom and can therefore represent a variety of motions. We develop a novel similarity metric between puppet and human motion by computing the reconstruction errors of the puppet motion in the latent space of the human motion and those of the human motion in the latent space of the puppet motion. This metric works even for relatively large databases. We conducted a user study of the system and subjects could find the desired motion with reasonable accuracy from a database consisting of everyday, exercise, and acrobatic behaviors.
Perceptual evaluation of footskate cleanup
(The Eurographics Association, 2011) Pra ák, Martin; Hoyet, Ludovic; O'Sullivan, Carol; A. Bargteil and M. van de Panne
When animating virtual humans for real-time applications such as games and virtual reality, animation systems often have to edit motions in order to be responsive. In many cases, contacts between the feet and the ground are not (or cannot be) properly enforced, resulting in a disturbing artifact know as footsliding or footskate. In this paper, we explore the perceptibility of this error and show that participants can perceive even very low levelsof footsliding (<21mm in most conditions). We then explore the visual fidelity of animations where footskate has been cleaned up using two different methods. We found that corrected animations were always preferred to those with footsliding, irrespective of the extent of the correction required. We also determined that a simple approach of lengthening limbs was preferred to a more complex approach using IK fixes and trajectory smoothing.
Physics-based Character Skinningusing Multi-Domain Subspace Deformations
(The Eurographics Association, 2011) Kimy, Theodore; James, Doug L.; A. Bargteil and M. van de Panne
We propose a domain-decomposition method to simulate articulated deformable characters entirely within a subspace framework. The method supports quasistatic and dynamic deformations, nonlinear kinematics and materials, and can achieve interactive time-stepping rates. To avoid artificial rigidity, or locking, associated with coupling low-rank domain models together with hard constraints, we employ penalty-based coupling forces. Themulti-domain subspace integrator can simulate deformations efficiently, and exploits efficient subspace-only evaluation of constraint forces between rotated domains using a novel Fast Sandwich Transform (FST). Examples are presented for articulated characters with quasistatic and dynamic deformations, and interactive performance with hundreds of fully coupled modes. Using our method, we have observed speedups of between three and four orders of magnitude over full-rank, unreduced simulations.

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