ECS 279: Computer Animation

Subject
ECS 279
Title
Computer Animation
Status
Active
Units
4.0
Effective Term
2016 Fall Quarter
Learning Activities
Lecture: 3 hours
Discussion: 1 hour
Description
Surveys current research and fundamental techniques that lie behind character animation tools. Emphasis on improving expressive aspects of movement and how physics, motion capture data, the arts and psychology literature, and interactive techniques can be used towards this goal.
Prerequisites
ECS 175; or ECS 275.
Enrollment Restrictions
Pass One and Pass Two open to Graduate Students in Computer Science only.

Summary of Course Content

  1. Looking at Animations
  2. Kinematic techniques
    1. Joint hierarchies, joint representation, interpolating splines
    2. Inverse kinematics
    3. Procedural techniques
  3. Physics and Control
    1. Spacetime constraints
    2. Controller based simulations
    3. Techniques for building controllers
    4. Muscle models
  4. Motion Capture Techniques
    1. Sequencing and blending clips
    2. Retargetting
  5. Movement Style
    1. Expressive aspects of movement
    2. Data-based approaches for expressive movement
    3. Procedural approaches for expressive movement
  6. Gesture Animation
    1. Nature of gesture
    2. Approaches to gesture animation
  7. Interactive Animation
  8. Skinning

Illustrative Reading
A selection of research papers.

Potential Course Overlap
There is no significant overlap with other courses.

Course Category

Graduate