COMPUTER ANIMATION II

Performance Based (Motion Capture)

Another technique is Motion Capture, in which magnetic or vision-based sensors record the actions of a human or animal object in three dimensions. A computer then uses these data to animate the object.

This technology has enabled a number of famous athletes to supply the actions for characters in sports video games. Motion capture is pretty popular with the animators mainly because some of the commonplace human actions can be captured with relative ease. However, there can be serious discrepancies between the shapes or dimensions of the subject and the graphical character and this may lead to problems of exact execution.

Physically Based (Dynamics)

Unlike key framing and motion picture, simulation uses the laws of physics to generate motion of pictures and other objects. Simulations can be easily used to produce slightly different sequences while maintaining physical realism. Secondly, real-time simulations allow a higher degree of interactivity where the real person can maneuver the actions of the simulated character.

In contrast the applications based on key-framing and motion select and modify motions form a pre-computed library of motions. One drawback that simulation suffers from is the expertise and time required to handcraft the appropriate controls systems.

Key Framing

A keyframe is a frame where we define changes in animation. Every frame is a keyframe when we create frame by frame animation. When someone creates a 3D animation on a computer, they usually don’t specify the exact position of any given object on every single frame. They create keyframes.

Keyframes are important frames during which an object changes its size, direction, shape or other properties. The computer then figures out all the in-between frames and saves an extreme amount of time for the animator. The following illustrations depict the frames drawn by user and the frames generated by computer