Skeleton driven animation based on implicit skinning

Skeleton-driven animation methods have been commonly used in animating 3D characters. In these methods, a skinning process that binds the character surface onto the skeleton is required. This process is usually accomplished manually and is a time-consuming task. In this paper, we propose a novel method for automatically skinning skeletal character models. Given the motion of a skeleton, our method can animate the character model automatically. In our method, each joint coordinate is parameterized by its surrounding local surface. In such a way, the character's surface is implicitly bound onto the skeleton. Character animation is achieved by minimizing an energy function that is carefully designed to prevent unnatural volume changes and to guarantee smooth deformations. Experiments demonstrate the efficiency and excellent performance of our method.

Graphical AbstractAnimating a skeletal character model: (a) A skeletal character model. (b) Radial edges are shown in line segments. Each joint location is parameterized by the points on a convex polygon, which is obtained from a cross-section on the joint. (c) Lengths of radial edges are expected to be maintained during animation. (d)–(f) Some frames in the animation result.Figure optionsDownload full-size imageDownload high-quality image (149 K)Download as PowerPoint slideHighlights► Our approach achieves the skinning process implicitly and automatically; the labor-intensive vertex weighting process is avoided. ► Character animation in each frame is achieved by minimizing a constrained Laplacian mesh deformation energy, which results in smooth deformation with nice local surface detail preservation. ► Our approach is efficient yet easy-to-implement.