Creature Features: Online motion puppetry for non-human characters

Abstract

We present a novel real-time motion puppetry system that drives the motion of non-human characters using human motion input. We aim to control a variety of creatures whose body structures and motion patterns can differ greatly from a human's. A combination of direct feature mapping and motion coupling enables the generation of natural creature motion, along with intuitive and expressive control for puppetry. First, in the design phase, direct feature mappings and motion classification can be efficiently and intuitively computed given crude motion mimicking as input. Later, during the puppetry phase, the user's body motions are used to control the target character in real-time, using the combination of feature mappings generated from the design phase. We demonstrate the effectiveness of our approach with several examples of natural puppetry, where a variety of non-human creatures are controlled in real-time using human motion input from a commodity motion sensing device.