The state of computer animation

For many of us in computer graphics and entertainment, the fascination is in the telling of stories wi th moving images. However the creation of convincing motion is nor a trivial problem. A~Ler many years of continual technical developments, animation is still a labor intensive process requiring great skill and art. A lmost all computer animation today is done using keyframe systems evolved from the early 19B0s. Only recently have advances such as full inverse kinematics, dynamics, flocking, automated walk cycles and 3D morphing made the leap from the academic to commercial sectors. As a consequence, the big computer graphics production companies still rely on custom animation software, either alone or in concert wi th commercial packages, to fill in the gaps they leave in the animation toolkit. Character animation is the hardest, requirIng the most skill and receiving the most critical eye from the public. The di f f icul ty of simulating natural living motion has led to a multitude of solutions, each attacking different aspects of the problem. Unfortunately, these solutions are developed in the laboratory, in isolation from everyday production tools, or within companies who understandably guard the techniques as trade secrets giving them a competitive edge.The commercial animation software producers are hard. pressed to keep up with the demands of the technology and generally lag five co 10 years behind the development community.They are trying hard to reverse this. Another difficulty faced in computer animarion is the global animation process itself. In commercial practice, an animation requires a multitude of elements in dozens to hundreds of scenes and shots_ Each scene may use several techniques of animation and rendering, involving numerous artists and animators. Coordinating these elements has always been one of the skills that make a good production company. However with the use of computers the process becomes more complex. As an animation passes through various stages of production, i t may pass through various types of software. More often than not, these different software packages are not entirely compatible, imposing constraints on the production pipeline. There is almost no commercial sof tware that addresses the problems of large CG animation projects either on the integration side or CG project management side. Most CG production companies have a staff of programmers to deal wi th these problems, and some of the older production companies rely on in-house software almost exclusively. The main problem for commercial software producers has been how to integrate a diversity of animation methods into a single animation structure, or conversely, how to create an animation system that will accommodate a grab-bag of animation methods. 3D Studio approached the problem by providing an easy pathway for plug-ins, Hundreds of th i rd-party developers have added diverse capabilit ies to the basic keyframe system including dynamics, racial animation, gait cont ro l and mot ion capture. Soft image and Al ias lWavefront have recently completely redesigned their systems to facilitate plug-ins and custom application development, as well as incorporating new animation methods in each release. However, the problem is far from solved. K~ rame animation, although aided by many improvements, remains a r ime-consuming process. Recent advances in motion capture, performance animation and the incorporation of scripting into keyfreme systems are beginning to break the dominance of keyframing and open up other avenues of creating animation. But these techniques are still new to production houses and their integration into the animation pipeline is far From complete.