Introduction

One of the most neglected aspect in computer animation is the physical correctness of the motion that is generated.  And that is the aspect that will be addressed in this project.  In this project, I will use the space-time constraints method proposed by Witkin and Kass, to generate kinematics motion of articulate figures which appears to be physically plausible.

Process and Goal

For this project, I will treat all figures as a hieratically connected rigid bodies with constrains.  Also, I will only deal with the motions that are symmetric respect to the median plan of the figure, and thus the problem can be simplified to be a 2D animation.  There will be some common controls or variable parameters for the user to modify the motions to be generated.

• create a luxo lamp composed of 4 rigid bodies, which will make jumping motion.
• create a simulated human figure composed of 8-12 rigid bodies.  And the figure will make the same jumping motion as the luxo lamp.
• write a system that will generate GAMS or AMPL script from a given space-time constrain problem.
• using either GAMS or AMPL to solve the system of nonlinear equations of the space-time constrain problem, and generate a data file containing the results.
• read the result file, and use the data to rend the motion of the articulated figure.

In the end result, there should be a program that will generate jumping (or back flipping ) motion for the luxo lamp and a human figure.  There should some parameters such as height and distance of the jump that the user can control.  And finally the motion for each of the figure should be physically plausible.

I will use OpenGL as the basis for developing this project.

Dates

• April 2-have the physics of luxo lamp worked out
• April 4-able to write out GAMS or AMPL script from the equations
• April 15-have the luxo lamp jumping
• April 19-have the physics of a human figure worked out
• April 30-have the human figure jumping

Report

    The results and discussion of the project is here.