Abstract
The main advantage in using motion recording systems for human figure animation is that exact replication of real movements can be achieved. In this paper, we present Pinocchio, an animation system that allows the control of human motion by introducing facilities for the design of animation sequences. In Pinocchio, movements performed by real actors are digitized using Elite, a 3D vision system based on a two-level architecture reflecting the hierarchical structure of vision in living beings. A general movement dictionary has been developed to classify movements and each movement in the dictionary has been stored in a motion database where it is available for display. Sequences of movements of the characters acting in an animated scene are specified by the animator through an animation script, then before display the characters themselves take care of the coordination issues related to the scene.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Badler N (1979) Digital representation of human movement. ACM Comput Surv 11(1):19–38
Badler N (1986) Animating human figures: perspectives and directions. In: Proc Graphics Interface '86, pp 115–120
Badler N (1989) Artificial intelligence, natural language, and simulation for human animation. In: Magnenat-Thalmann N, Thalmann D (eds) State of the art in computer animation. Springer, Tokyo Berlin Heidelberg New York, pp 19–31
Bonner S, Shin KG (1982) A comparative study of robot languages. IEEE Computer, pp 82–96
Calvert TW, Chapman J, Patla A (1980) The integration of subjective and objective data in the animation of human movement. Comput Graph 14(3):198–203
Camurri A, Morasso P, Tagliasco V, Zaccaria R (1986) Dance and movement notation. In: Morasso P, Tagliasco V (eds) Human movement understanding. North-Holland, Amsterdam, pp 85–124
Chua TS, Wong WH, Chu KC (1988) Design and implementation of the animation language SOLAR. In: Magnenat-Thalmann N, Thalmann D (eds) Proc of CG International '88. Springer, Tokyo, Berlin Heidelberg New York, pp 15–26
Collodi C (1883) Le avventure di Pinocchio
Dami L, Fiume E, Nierstrasz O, Tsichritzis D (1988) Temporal scripts for objects. In: Tsichritzis D (ed) Active object environments. Tech Rep, Centre Universitaire d'Informatique, University of Geneva
Drewery K, Tsotsos J (1986) Goal directed animation using english motion commands. In: Proc Graphics Interface '86, pp 131–135
Ferrigno G, Pedotti A (1985) Elite: a digital dedicated hardware system for movement analysis via real-time TV signal processing. IEEE Trans on Biomedical Engineering BME 32 (11):943–950
Ginsberg CM, Maxwell D (1983) Graphical marionette. In: ACM SIGGRAPH SIGART Workshop on Motion: Representation and perception, pp 303–310
IEEE Computer Graphics and Applications (1982) Special issue on: Human body models and animation
IEEE Computer Graphics and Applications (1987) Special issue on: Articulated figure animation
Magnenat-Thalmann N, Thalmnn D (1983) The use of high-level 3-D graphical types in the Mira animation system. IEEE Comput Graph Appl, pp 9–16
Magnenat-Thalmann N, Thalmann D (1986) Special cinematographic effects with virtual movie cameras. IEEE Comput Graph Appl, pp 43–50
Magnenat-Thalmann N, Thalmann D, Fortin M (1985) Miranim: an extensible director-oriented system for the animation of realistic images. IEEE Comput Graph Appl, pp 61–73
Maiocchi R (1989) A qualitative approach to the synthesis of human motion. Internal Report 89-063 Dipartimento di Elettronica, Politecnico di Milano
Maiocchi R, Pernici B (1990) Temporal data management in real-time systems: a comparative view. To appear in: IEEE Transactions on Data and Knowledge Engineering
Marey EJ (1984) Photo Poche, Paris
Meyer B (1988) Object-oriented software construction. Prentice-Hall, Englewood Cliffs, NJ
Miller GA (1972) English verbs of motion: a case study in semantics and lexical memory. In: Coding processes in human memory. Wiley, New York, pp 335–372
Muybridge E (1955) The human figure in motion. Dover New York
Reynolds CW (1982) Computer animation with scripts and actors. Comput Graph 16(3):289–296
Tsotsos JK, Mylopoulos J, Covvey HD, Zucker SW (1980) A framework for visual motion understanding. IEEE Trans on PAMI PAMI 2(6):563–573
Zeltzer D (1982) Motor control techniques for figure animation. IEEE Comput Graph Appl, pp 53–59
Zeltzer D (1985) Towards an integrated view of 3-D computer animation. The Visual Computer 1:249–259
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Maiocchi, R., Pernici, B. Directing an animated scene with autonomous actors. The Visual Computer 6, 359–371 (1990). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01901022
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01901022