Intelligent Technologies for Interactive Entertainment. 5th International ICST Conference, INTETAIN 2013, Mons, Belgium, July 3-5, 2013, Revised Selected Papers

Research Article

Automatically Mapping Human Skeletons onto Virtual Character Armatures

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  • @INPROCEEDINGS{10.1007/978-3-319-03892-6_10,
        author={Andrea Sanna and Fabrizio Lamberti and Gianluca Paravati and Gilles Carlevaris and Paolo Montuschi},
        title={Automatically Mapping Human Skeletons onto Virtual Character Armatures},
        proceedings={Intelligent Technologies for Interactive Entertainment. 5th International ICST Conference, INTETAIN 2013, Mons, Belgium, July 3-5, 2013, Revised Selected Papers},
        proceedings_a={INTETAIN},
        year={2014},
        month={6},
        keywords={virtual character animation automatic armature mapping motion capture graph similarity},
        doi={10.1007/978-3-319-03892-6_10}
    }
    
  • Andrea Sanna
    Fabrizio Lamberti
    Gianluca Paravati
    Gilles Carlevaris
    Paolo Montuschi
    Year: 2014
    Automatically Mapping Human Skeletons onto Virtual Character Armatures
    INTETAIN
    Springer
    DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-03892-6_10
Andrea Sanna1,*, Fabrizio Lamberti1, Gianluca Paravati1, Gilles Carlevaris1, Paolo Montuschi1
  • 1: Politecnico di Torino
*Contact email: andrea.sanna@polito.it

Abstract

Motion capture systems provide an efficient and interactive solution for extracting information related to a human skeleton, which is often exploited to animate virtual characters. When the character cannot be assimilated to an anthropometric shape, the task to map motion capture data onto the armature to be animated could be extremely challenging. This paper presents a novel methodology for the automatic mapping of a human skeleton onto virtual character armatures. By extending the concept of graph similarity, joints and bones of the tracked human skeleton are mapped onto an arbitrary shaped armature. A prototype implementation has been developed by using the Microsoft Kinect as body tracking device. Preliminary results show that the proposed solution can already be used to animate truly different characters such as a Pixar-like lamp, a fish or a dog.