Walking with Pens J246;rn Loviscach（rn Loviscach笔J246;走）.pdf

EUROGRAPHICS 2005 / J. Dingliana and F. Ganovelli Short Presentations Walking with Pens Philipp Kolhoff, Jacqueline Preuß and Jörn Loviscach Fachbereich Elektrotechnik und Informatik, Hochschule Bremen, Germany Abstract Believable 3D animation of walking or running characters still requires complex motion capture technology or extensive skills in manual keyframing. We present an inexpensive, yet natural input method: The user “walks” on a digital graphics tablet, striding over the surface with two pens in his or her hands, where each pen represents one leg. This technique leverages the popular graphics tablets that can track two drawing tools at the same time. We implemented recording software and a plug-in to use the data in off-the-shelf 3D animation software. Categories and Subject Descriptors (according to ACM CCS): I.3.7 [Computer Graphics]: Animation 1. Introduction The input of gait animation is notoriously difficult, due to its complexity and the sensitivity of human perception concern- ing implausible motion. Character animators rely on a huge amount of expertise and on motion capture methods, which often are expensive and require lots of space and setup. The method presented here is based on a digital graphics tablet that can track two tools at the same time, such as the Intuos and Intuos2 series by Wacom. The user strides over the tablet with the electronic pens, see Figures 1 and 2. This method has the following advantages: • The input of both the spatial and the temporal features of the gait is natural, precise, and robust. • Most graphics designers own the necessary equipment, which is inexpensive compared to standard motion cap-