A System for View-Dependent Animation

Abstract

In this paper, we present a novel system for facilitating the creation of stylized view-dependent 3D animation. Our system harnesses the skill and intuition of a traditionally trained animator by providing a convivial sketch based 2D to 3D interface. A base mesh model of the character can be modified to match closely to an input sketch, with minimal user interaction. To do this, we recover the best camera from the intended view direction in the sketch using robust computer vision techniques. This aligns the mesh model with the sketch. We then deform the 3D character in two stages - first we reconstruct the best matching skeletal pose from the sketch and then we deform the mesh geometry. We introduce techniques to incorporate deformations in the view-dependent setting. This allows us to set up view-dependent models for animation.Categories and Subject Descriptors (according to ACM CCS): I.3.7 [Computer Graphics]: Three-Dimensional Graphics and Realism - Animation 7Our system takes as input a sketch (a), and a base mesh model (b), then recovers a camera to orient the base mesh (c), then reconstructs the skeleton pose (d), and finally deforms the mesh to find the best possible match with the sketch (e).