Parametric animation of performance-captured mesh sequences

Abstract

In this paper, we introduce an approach to high-level parameterisation of captured mesh sequences of actor performance for real-time interactive animation control. High-level parametric control is achieved by non-linear blending between multiple mesh sequences exhibiting variation in a particular movement. For example, walking speed is parameterised by blending fast and slow walk sequences. A hybrid non-linear mesh sequence blending approach is introduced to approxi- mate the natural deformation of non-linear interpolation techniques whilst maintaining the real-time performance of linear mesh blending. Quantitative results show that the hybrid approach gives an accurate real-time approximation of offline non-linear deformation. An evaluation of the approach shows good performance not only for entire meshes but also with specific mesh areas. Results are presented for single and multi-dimensional parametric control of walking (speed/direction), jumping (height/distance) and reaching (height) from captured mesh sequences. This approach allows continuous real-time control of high-level parameters such as speed and direction whilst maintaining the natural surface dynamics of captured movement.