CS 15-497/15-861
Computer Animation

Spring 2002
TuTh 10:30-12:00

Description
This course introduces techniques for computer animation such as keyframing, procedural methods, motion capture, and simulation. The course will also explore current research topics in computer animation such as dynamic simulation of flexible and rigid objects, automatically generated control systems, and evolution of behaviors.

Instructor: Jessica Hodgins; jkh@cs.cmu.edu; 4228b NSH (inside the Graphics Lab, 4228); (412)268-6795; Office Hours: Drop by or send email to schedule an appointment.
Teaching Assistants: Kiran Bhat; kiranb@cs.cmu.edu; 4228 NSH (Graphics Lab); (412)268-7895; Office Hours: Thursday 4:45-5:45 or send email to schedule an appointment.; Alla Safanova; alla@cs.cmu.edu; 4228 NSH (Graphics Lab); (412)268-7895; Office Hours: Wednesday 4:45-5:45 or send email to schedule an appointment.

Announcements:

Project Presentation Requirements:
You should come to the final presentations with a powerpoint (or equivalent) presentation and with animations and/or demos showing your results. We'll meet in WeH7500. We'll need to do the AV swap between speakers quickly so please either bring a laptop (preferred) or get your materials onto the computer in that room in advance. We'll collect project names into a hat and select the order randomly. I expect everyone to be there for the full time--if you cannot be, please let me know in advance.
It is perfectly acceptable to find useful code on the net for your projects but you MUST acknowledge your sources both in your presentation and in your write-up.
The presentations will be 12 minutes long with an additional 3 minutes for each additional person in the group. In your presentation you should cover at least the following points:
- Goal of the project
- Why the project is interesting and what work have others done in the area.
- What you have done. What previous work/software are you building on.
- Demonstration of how well it works.
- What each person contributed if you were part of a team.
- What you would do next if you had more time.
Your project write-up should cover the same points and include figures. You must also turn in your animations either on CD or by including a pointer to its location on the web or in your afs space. Everything is due on the day of the presentation. No late days here because of the end of the term.
This coming Tuesday we'll have a guest speaker and meet in 7500 Wean:
Wayne Wooten
Animation Scientist
Pixar Animation Studios

Making "Monster's Inc.": A Presentation of Techniques and Technologies Used to Create Pixar's Animated Films.
Pixar has developed some of the world's most advanced techniques for generating computer animated feature films, recently receiving an Oscar for the creation of the Photorealistic Renderman software. In this talk I plan to discuss the research and development that occurs at Pixar and the technologies behind the film production process. My talk will touch on artistic pre-production, the production pipeline, rendering technologies, the renderfarm, and post-production issues. Sequences from Pixar's latest film, "Monster's Inc" will be used as a case study for presenting how the various pieces of technology come together to create the final product.
This year's SIGGRAPH papers are starting to appear on the web here
Grade Distribution for Assignment 1
The free version of Maya is finally out. See the pointer below under free software. [thanks to Roger Braunstein for pointing out the release]
Animation makes it into Nature
[thanks to Andrew Pomerance for the pointer]
Imac does the Luxo (from Pixar)
[thanks to Roger Braunstein for the pointer]

General Information

This course will teach you about current techniques in computer animation. By the end of the course you should be able to

use the basic animation techniques to produce motion for an animated sequence
read and critically evaluate the current literature in computer animation

Texts: Required text (should be in the bookstore):

Computer Animation by Rich Parent,

Other Optional Texts (not in the bookstore):

Art Of 3-D Computer Animation & Imaging by Kerlow,
Disney Animation: The Illusion Of Life by Thomas and Johnston, (appears to be out of print again)
Computer Facial Animation by Parke and Waters,
On Film Editing by Dmytryk.
Readings in Computer Animation and Digital Special Effects

Syllabus

An accurate syllabus for the past and an approximate syllabus for the future:

Week of	Tue	Thu
January 15	Topic: Introduction and Overview of Animation Slides: postscript pdf Supplemental Reading: Hodgins, J. K., O'Brien, J. F., Bodenheimer, R. E.. Computer Animation. In the Wiley Encyclopedia of Electrical and Electronics Engineering, John G. Webster, ed., v. 3, pp. 686-690, 1999 Videos: Hodgins Introduction: Hopping Robots On the Run Atlanta in Motion Keyframing: Luxo Jr. Snippet from Toy Story II Motion Capture: Motion Capture Samples from the Alien Trilogy - Acclaim Entertainment, Inc. (Issue 101: SIGGRAPH 94 Electronic Theater) Simulation: Geri's Game Water scene from Antz Group Behaviors: Wildebeest scene from Lion King	Topic: Principles of Animation Slides: postscript pdf Pipelining Slides: postscript pdf Cartoon Laws of Physics Supplemental Reading: Parent Chapter 1 Lasseter SIGGRAPH Course Notes Thomas and Johnston pp15-44 Videos: Bunny (rendered using radiosity, 1998 Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film) Red's Dream Fantasia: Socceror's Apprentice
January 22	Topic: Keyframing smooth interpolation tricks in interpolation arc length re-parametization Slides: postscript pdf Supplemental Reading: Chapter 2 and Chapter 3.1-3.2 Parent Scattered data interpolation with multilevel B-splines Lee, S.; Wolberg, G.; Shin, S.Y. Visualization and Computer Graphics, IEEE Transactions on , Volume: 3 Issue: 3 , July-Sept. 1997 Page(s): 228-244 Appendix B.4 Parent for a review of splines Spline handout from Pollard Videos: Monster's Trailers Tin Toy Another snippet from Toy Story	Topic: 3D orientation: the trouble with Euler angles quaternions Slides: postscript pdf Supplemental Reading: Parent, Chapter 3.3-3.4 Practical Parameterization of Rotations Using the Exponential Map, Grassia Spherical averages and applications to spherical splines and interpolation Samuel R. Buss , Jay P. Fillmore ACM Transactions on Graphics (TOG) April 2001 Volume 20 Issue 2 Animating rotation with quaternion curves. Ken Shoemake SIGGRAPH '85 Proceedings, pages 245--254. Videos: Knick Knack Snippet from A Bug's Life Assignment 1: Keyframing Frequently asked questions on Assignment 1 Grade Distribution
January 29	Topic: Inverse Kinematics: Slides: postscript pdf Supplemental Reading: Inverse kinematics positioning using nonlinear programming for highly articulated figures, Zhao and Badler TOG '94 Computational modeling for the computer animation of legged figures, Girard and Maciejewski, SIGGRAPH '85 Watt and Watt pp369-384 Videos: Endgame, Stanford Computer Science Robotics Laboratory (Issue 101: SIGGRAPH 94 Electronic Theater) Eurythmy - Amkraut, Girard (Issue 52 SIGGRAPH '89 Computer Graphics Theater and Animation Screening Room Highlights)	Topic: Motion Capture Technology Slides: postscript pdf Supplemental Reading: Parent Chapter 6.7 The Process of Motion Capture: Dealing with the Data Using a Motion Capture Service Bureau by Alberto Menache O'Brien, J. F., Bodenheimer, B. E., Brostow, G. J., Hodgins, J. K., Automatic Joint Parameter Estimation from Magnetic Motion Capture Data. Proceedings of Graphics Interface 2000, Montreal, Quebec, Canada, May 15-17, pp. 53-60. Many Motion Capture Links Videos: Party Hardy The Making of Brilliance
February 05	Topic: Field trip to the motion capture lab -- meet in Weh 1326	Topic: Joint with 462. Meet in WeH 7500. Guest Lecture: Takeo Igarashi, Brown University Interaction techniques for 3D Graphics -- modeling and animation 3D Graphics is getting common in movies and video games, but most people just watch them instead of creating them. One of the reason is that current tools are too difficult for novice users to use. Our goal is to provide easy-to-use tools for everyone to create 3D Graphics for recreational, educational, and communication purposes. In the talk, I will intrduce a sketch-based freeform modeling system (Teddy), an hint-based interface for sketching 3D scenes (Chateau), an interface for manipulating clothing, and a system for designing simple animations quickly.
February 12	Guest Lecturer: Alla Safonova Topic: Motion Textures (thanks to Schoedl et al. for the first draft of the slides) Assignment 1 due Assignment 2 out: Motion Textures Supplemental Reading: Video Textures, Schoedl, Szeliski, Salesin, and Essa, SIGGRAPH 00, pp 489-498. Video Textures web page	Topic: Motion Editing Supplemental Reading: Comparing Contraint-Based Motion Editing Methods Michael Gleicher, Graphical Models. August 2001 Motion warping, Andrew Witkin and Zoran Popovic, SIGGRAPH 1995 Retargetting motion to new characters, Michael Gleicher Siggraph 1998 A hierarchical approach to interactive motion editing for human-like figures, Jehee Lee and Sung Yong Shin, Proceedings of the SIGGRAPH 1999 Motion path editing Michael Gleicher Proceedings on 2001 Symposium on Interactive 3D graphics March 2001 Motion editing with spacetime constraints, Michael Gleicher Proceedings of the 1997 Symposium on Interactive 3D graphics Physically based motion transformation Zoran Popovic and Andrew Witkin, SIGGRAPH 1999 Videos: Motion Warping, Witkin and Popovic, Siggraph '95 Motion Editing with Spacetime Constraints, Gleicher, I3DG '97 A Hierarchical Approach to Interactive Motion Editing, Lee and Shin, Siggraph '99 Retargeting, Gleicher, Siggraph '98 Physically based motion transformations, SIGGRAPH '99
February 19	Topic: Interpolating motion data transitions in time transitions across styles Supplemental Reading: Efficient Generation of Motion Transitions Using Spacetime Constraints Charles Rose, Brian Guenter, Bobby Bodenheimer, and Michael Cohen, Siggraph '96 Verbs and Adverbs: Multidimensional Motion Interpolation Charles Rose, Michael Cohen and Bobby Bodenheimer, IEEE CG&A Fourier Principles for Emotion-based Human Figure Animation, Munetoshi Unuma and Ken Anjyo and Ryozo Takeuchi, Siggraph '95 Motion Texture Pullen and Bregler Style Machines Matthew Brand, Aaron Hertzmann. Proceedings of SIGGRAPH 2000. pp. 183-192. Videos: videos corresponding to the supplemental reading	Guest Lecturer: Kiran Bhat Topic: Particle Dynamics Differential Equations Supplemental Reading Physically Based Modeling: Principles and Practice, Witkin and Baraff Videos: Particle Dreams Issue 100 (#44) Hunchback of Notre Dame -- confetti Fabricated Rhythm - Gerald Weil Issue 100 (#40) Cooking with Kurt - Kurt Fleischer Issue 36 (#6) Dynamic Simulations of Flexible Objects - David Hauman Issue 36 (#14)
February 26	Guest Lecturer: Kiran Bhat Topic: Implicit Methods Rigid body dynamics Moment of Intertia, Linked Rigid Bodies Videos: Tipsy Turvy - Computer Animation Systems, IBM Research Issue 52 (#7) Coupling Active and Passive Simulations - O'Brien, Zordan, Hodgins Simulation and Collision Detection Manocha and Lin UNC Images from Baraff's papers The End, Chris Landreth Cloth Simulation Demo Software: Multibody Dynamics, Collision Detection, Computation of Mass Properties SDFast from Symbolic Dynamics	Topic: Background for Assignment 3 Introduction to Control Videos: Interactive Manipulation of Rigid Body Simulations - Popovic, Seitz, Erdmann, Popovic, Witkin Passive Walking
March 5	Topic: Class cancelled due to illness. Help session on Assignment 2 instead. Assignment 2 due--deadline extended until Wednesday midnight	Mid-semester break--no classes
March 12	Topic: Control: Legged Locomotion Supplemental Reading: Raibert and Hodgins. Animation of Dynamic Legged Locomotion. Siggraph 1991. Hodgins and Wooten, 1998. Animating Human Athletics, Proceedings of ISRR. Hodgins and Pollard. Adapting Simulated Behaviors For New Characters, Siggraph 1997. Videos: On the Run Biped, quadruped, juggling Gait Transitions Rough Terrain Assignment 3 out	Topic: Midterm
March 19	Topic: Guest Lecturer: Prof. James Duesing CFA, CMU History of Animation Project Proposal requirements out	Topic: Brainstorming for final projects
March 26	Topic: More on Control Supplemental Reading: Videos Animating Athletics van de Panne tapes Pande Hase	Topic: More on Control Systems: Supplemental Reading: Witkin and Kass, SIGGRAPH '88 J. Auslander, A. Fukunaga, H. Partovi, J. Christensen, L. Hsu, P. Reiss, A. Shuman, J. Marks, J.T. Ngo, "Further Experience with Controller-Based Automatic Motion Synthesis for Articulated Figures," ACM Trans. on Graphics, 14(4):311-336, Oct. 1995. J. T. Ngo, J. Marks, "Spacetime Constraints Revisited," Proc. of SIGGRAPH 93, pp. 343-350, Anaheim, CA, Aug. 1993. Composable controllers for physics-based character animation Petros Faloutsos, Michiel van de Panne, Demetri Terzopoulos, SIGGRAPH 2001. Reusable motion synthesis using state-space controllers Michiel van de Panne, Eugene Fiume, Zvonko Vranesic, SIGGRAPH 1998. Sensor-actuator networks Michiel van de Panne, SIGGRAPH 1993. Artificial evolution for computer graphics Karl Sims, SIGGRAPH 1991. Sims Alife '94 Grzeszczuk and Terzopoulos SIGGRAPH '95 NeuroAnimator: fast neural network emulation and control of physics-based models Radek Grzeszczuk, Demetri Terzopoulos, Geoffrey Hinton, SIGGRAPH 1998. Videos: Witkin and Kass, SIGGRAPH '88 Further Experience with Controller-Based Automatic Motion Synthesis for Articulated Figures, J. Auslander, A. Fukunaga, H. Partovi, J. Christensen, L. Hsu, P. Reiss, A. Shuman, J. Marks, J.T. Ngo, ACM Trans. on Graphics, 14(4):311-336, Oct. 1995. Sims Alife '94 Neuroanimator, SIGGRAPH '98 Faloutsos, SIGGRAPH '01
April 2	Spring Break	Spring Break
April 9	Topic: More Brainstorming on Final Projects Cinematography 0.01 Videos: Beat Dedication, Issue 39, Siggraph '88 Grinning Evil Death Leonardo's Deluge, Issue 52, Siggraph '89 Panspermia, Issue 62, Siggraph '90 [missing] Primordial Dance, Issue 71, Siggraph '91 Liquid Selves, Issue 81, Siggraph '92 Assignment 3 due	Topic: Higher-Level Behaviors crowds control of animated characters Videos: Batman Returns Stanley and Stella: Breaking the Ice Walking Motion, Takeuchi Lion King Mulan Hunchback of Notre Dame Final Project Proposals due
April 16	Topic: Guest Lecturer: Steve Sullivan, ILM	Topic: Fluids and Gases Hair and Fur and other passive stuff Videos Leaf Magic - Norton, IBM T.J. Watson Research Center
April 23	Topic: AI and Crowds Videos: Reynolds Stanley and Stella Lion King Mulan Antz Hunchback of Notre Dame Funge, Tu, Terzpolous, SIGGRAPH 99 Blumberg et al., SIGGRAPH 2002	Topic: Facial Animation Videos: Waters, Essa, Final Fantasy Leonardo's Deluge - Sims Primordial Dance - Sims Liquid Selves - Sims
April 30	Guest Lecturer: Wayne Wooten, Pixar Topic: Making "Monster's Inc.": A Presentation of Techniques and Technologies Used to Create Pixar's Animated Films.	Topic: Help session for final projects
May 9 1:30-8:30	Final exam slot--May 9th 1:30-8:30 Final Project Presentations Dinner provided, WeH 7500

Programs and Grading

Collaboration and team projects are encouraged but must be coordinated through the instructor.

There will be three assignments (2-3 weeks each) one project (approximately 6 weeks), as well as a midterm after 2/3 of the semester. The three assignments will be

keyframing programming assignment (10%)
motion capture programming assignment (15%)
simulation programming assignment (15%)

You have 5 late days that you may use for any of the programs during the quarter but further extensions require an excellent excuse. Grading will be based on exams (25% midterm), programs (40%), projects (25%), and class participation (10%).

A few advanced students may elect to do only some of the assignments and complete a larger project of their own design. Consult with me if you want to explore this option.

All projects and programs will be turned in as movie files. Extra disk space will be provided for the class.

Possible Topics for Final Project (to be expanded)

Simulation:
- flexible objects -- cube of jello in an interesting world
- interface to claymation in the computer
- natural phenomen:
  - erosion
  - growth of algorithmic plants
- bungee jumper
- octopus or jellyfish
- spring-mass fish
Control:
- Evolving control systems
- Bridging between mocap and simulation
Motion Capture:
- IK for constraints on the ground
- automatically detecting constraints
Higher-level Behaviors:
- herds of bipeds
- path planning
- traffic simulations
- interacting with simulations
Non-realistic animation:
- non-photorealistic rendering of animation
- non-realistic motion: cartoon laws of physics [with hopper/biped]
Applications for animation:
- education, engineering, program visualization

Other Animation Classes

Irfan Essa's class at Gatech

Free software:

From their web page: Blender Creator is the first and only fully integrated 3D creation suite allowing modeling, animation, rendering, post-production, interactive creation and playback with cross-platform compatibility - all in one tidy, easily downloadable package!
Maya will have a special Learning Edition available for students to download in February.

Contact Information:

Jessica Hodgins

jkh@cs.cmu.edu

Robotics Institute

Carnegie Mellon University

Pittsburgh, PA 15213

CS 15-497/15-861 Computer Animation

Spring 2002 TuTh 10:30-12:00