Evaluating Motion Graphs for Character Navigation
Paul S. A. Reitsma, Nancy S. Pollard, SCA 2004.
Abstract
Realistic and directable humanlike characters are an ongoing goal in
animation. Motion graph data structures hold much promise for achieving
this goal. However, the quality of the results obtained from a motion
graph may not be easy to predict from the input motion segments. This
paper introduces the idea of assessing a data structure such as a motion
graph for its utility in a particular application. We focus on navigation
tasks and define metrics for evaluating expected path quality and
coverage for a given environment. One key to evaluating a motion graph
for navigation tasks is to first embed it into the environment in a way
that captures all possible paths that might result from playing back
the motion graph within that environment. This paper describes an
algorithm for accomplishing this embedding that preserves the
flexibility of the original motion graph. We use the metrics defined
in this paper to compare motion datasets and to highlight areas where
these datasets could be improved.
Paper: PDF
Video: MOV