Abstract
In the perception of biological motion, the stimulus information is confined to a small number of lights attached to the major joints of a moving person. Despite this drastic degradation of the stimulus information, the human visual apparatus organizes the swarm of moving dots into a vivid percept of a moving biological creature. Several techniques have been proposed to create point-light stimuli: placing dots at strategic locations on photographs or films, video recording a person with markers attached to the body, computer animation based on artificial synthesis, and computer animation based on motion-capture data. A description is given of the technique we are currently using in our laboratory to produce animated point-light figures. The technique is based on a combination of motion capture and three-dimensional animation software (Character Studio, Autodesk, Inc., 1998). Some of the advantages of our approach are that the same actions can be shown from any viewpoint, that point-light versions, as well as versions with a full-fleshed character, can be created of the same actions, and that point lights can indicate the center of a joint (thereby eliminating several disadvantages associated with other techniques).
Article PDF
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Ahlström, V., Blake, R., &Ahlström, U. (1997). Perception of biological motion.Perception,26, 1539–1548.
Autodesk, Inc. (1997).Autodesk 3D Studio Max (Release 2). Sausalito, CA: Author.
Autodesk, Inc. (1998).Character Studio Max (Release 2). Sausalito, CA: Author.
Bertenthal, B. I. (1993). Infants’ perception of biomechanical motions: Intrinsic image and knowledge-based constraints. In C. Granrud (Ed.),Visual perception and cognition in infancy (pp. 175–214). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
Bertenthal, B. I., Proffitt, D. R., Spetner, N. B., &Thomas, M. A. (1985). The development of infant sensitivity to biomechanical motions.Child Development,56, 531–543.
Bonda, E., Petrides, M., Ostry, D., &Evans, A. (1996). Specific involvement of human parietal systems and the amygdala in the perception of biological motion.Journal of Neuroscience,16, 3737–3744.
Cutting, J. E. (1978a). Generation of synthetic male and female walkers through manipulation of a biomechanical invariant.Perception,7, 393–405.
Cutting, J. E. (1978b). A program to generate synthetic walkers as dynamic point-light displays.Behavior Research Methods & Instrumentation,10, 91–94.
Cutting, J. E. (1981). Coding theory adapted to gait perception.Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception & Performance,7, 71–87.
Cutting, J. E., &Kozlowski, L. T. (1977). Recognizing friends by their walk: Gait perception without familiarity cues.Bulletin of the Psychonomic Society,9, 353–356.
Forsburg, J. A. (Producer) (1998a).Character Studio 2.0 advanced techniques [Film]. (Available from NUimage Labs, Inc., P.O. Box 128, Cary, NC 27512)
Forsburg, J. A. (Producer) (1998b).Introduction series: Character Studio 2.0 [Film]. (Available from NUimage Labs, Inc., P.O. Box 128, Cary, NC 27512)
Hodgins, J. K. (1998, March). Animating human motion.Scientific American,278, 64–70.
Hodgins, J. K., O’Brien, J. F., &Tumblin, J. (1998). Perception of human motion with different geometric models.IEEE Transactions on Visualization & Computer Graphics,4, 307–317.
Hoenkamp, E. (1978). Perceptual cues that determine the labeling of human gait.Journal of Human Movement Studies,4, 59–69.
Johansson, G. (1973). Visual perception of biological motion and a model for its analysis.Perception & Psychophysics,14, 201–211.
Lankes, R. (1998a). Character Studio 2 [Review].Visual Magic Magazine,16. Retrieved October 22, 1999, from http://visualmagic.awn.com/ nov98/cs2.html.
Lankes, R. (1998b). 3D Studio 2.5 [Review].Visual Magic Magazine,16. Retrieved October 22, 1999, http://visualmagic.awn.com/mag/ sept98/max2_5.html.
Maas, J. B., Johansson, G., Jansson, G., &Runeson, S. (1971).Motion perception I: 2-dimensional motion [Film]. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.
Marey, E. J. (1894).Le mouvement. Paris: Masson.
Mather, G., Radford, K., &West, S. (1992). Low-level visual processing of biological motion.Proceedings of the Royal Society of London: Series B,249, 149–155.
Mather, G., &West, S. (1993). Recognition of animal locomotion from dynamic point-light displays.Perception,22, 759–766.
Mulder, A. (1994).Human movement tracking technology (Tech. Rep. 94-1). Burnaby, BC: Simon Fraser University, School of Kinesiology.
Muybridge, E. (1955).The human figure in motion. Mineola, NY: Dover.
Nilsson, L.-G., Olofsson, U., &Nyberg, L. (1992). Implicit memory of dynamic information.Bulletin of the Psychonomic Society,30, 265–267.
Oxford Metrics Ltd (1997).Body Builder (Version 3.5). Oxford: Author.
Pepper’s Ghost Productions, Ltd (1999).Muybridge variations. Kingston-upon-Thames, U.K.: Author.
Proffitt, D. R., Bertenthal, B. I., &Roberts, R. J., Jr. (1984). The role of occlusion in reducing multistability in moving point-light displays.Perception & Psychophysics,36, 315–323.
Runeson, S. (1994). Perception of biological motion: The KSD-principle and the implications of a distal versus proximal approach. In G. Jansson, S. S. Bergström, & W. Epstein (Eds.),Perceiving events and objects (pp. 383–405). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
Thomas, S. M., &Jordan, T. R. (2001). Techniques for the production of point-light and fully illuminated video displays from identical recordings.Behavior Research Methods, Instruments, & Computers,33, 59–64.
Verfaillie, K. (1993). Orientation-dependent priming effects in the perception of biological motion.Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception & Performance,19, 992–1013.
Verfaillie, K. (2000). Visual perception of human locomotion: Priming effects in direction discrimination.Brain & Cognition,44, 192–213.
Verfaillie, K., &Daems, A. (2002). Representing and anticipating human actions in vision.Visual Cognition,9, 217–232.
Verfaillie, K., De Troy, A., &Van Rensbergen, J. (1994). Transsaccadic integration of biological motion.Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, & Cognition,20, 649–670.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Additional information
The writing of this article was supported by Concerted Research Effort Convention No. GOA 98/01, the Belgium Programme on Inter-university Poles of Attraction Contract No. P4/19, and the Fund for Scientific Research of Flanders.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Dekeyser, M., Verfaillie, K. & Vanrie, J. Creating stimuli for the study of biological-motion perception. Behavior Research Methods, Instruments, & Computers 34, 375–382 (2002). https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03195465
Received:
Accepted:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03195465