Pose space parameterization and style transfer of skin deformation

Abstract

We present a technique to parameterize skin deformation by skeletal motion and to transfer the deformation style from one character to another. We decompose skin deformation into time-varying signals and basis matrices by using dimension reduction techniques and then approximate the time-varying signals by using radial basis functions with respect to joint angles that define skeletal motion. This decomposition reduces the size of deformation data to a small number of time-varying signals that represent the complex role of muscle action. The subsequent parameterization yields a fast and intuitive control of characters; thus, it allows us to construct faithful skin deformations quickly as skeletal bones move. The representation of our parameterization allows us to capture and transfer a derived deformation style to another skeletonskin structure without considering the input dimension of the deformation data. This style transfer can be used as a basis for realistically animating variants of sample characters that have the same skeletal topology. Parameterization of skin deformation and its style transfer can be performed within a small amount of error once the preprocessing time and control of the deformation is carried out in real time by our graphics processing unit implementation.