Real time interactive animation for articulated bodies

Abstract

In interactive environments including computer games and virtual reality applications, we have increased need for interactive control of articulated body motions.Recently, physically based methods including constrained dynamics techniques are introduced to this area, in order to produce more realistic animation sequences. However, they are hard to achieve real-time control of articulated bodies, due to their heavy computations. In this paper, we present a procedural method for interactive animation of articulated bodies. In our method, each object of the constrained body is first moved according to their physical properties and external forces, without considering any constraints. Then, the locations of objects are adjusted to satisfy given constraints. Through adapting this two-stage approach, we have avoided the solving of large linear systems of equations, to finally achieve the interactive animation of articulated bodies. We also present a few example sequences of animations, which are interactively generated on PC platforms. This method can be easily applied to character animations in virtual environments.