Eva Schiffer

Techniques for Motion Editing

Summary:

This chapter discusses the basic tools that currently exist for editing motion data. While the chapter mostly focuses on motion capture data to be used in animation, it does mention how some of the tools could be used on simulation data and traditional hand animated keyframe motion.

Problem:

The main problem this paper is trying to address is how you can edit motion make small changes to it without losing the essence of the captured performance. 

Method:

This chapter discusses representation issues for skeleton and motion models as well as a large number of low level tools for motion editing. The chapter also mentions a few slightly higher level tools that work to composite several examples of similar motions to create a similar effect.

Key Ideas:

There are a number of tricky representation issues to the traditional model used for motion capture data. Sampling is an important issue when editing motion. The many low level tools that are available for editing motion are generally easy to mess with, but hard to find useful settings on (as their knobs usually have no inherent "meaning" in motion space). It is easy to destroy the essence of a captured motion with a small change. Slightly higher level tools are beginning to be built, but still have a very long way to go.

Contributions:

This chapter provides a good overview of the issues with the motion capture data model and the existing tools for editing motion. It also conveys just how painfully hard motion editing can be and how hard it is to capture elusive human details (such as mood).

Questions:

I am curious how much the existing, higher level tools have changed since this chapter was written.