Figure 1: Users wearing a few retro-reflective markers control the full-body motion of avatars by acting out the motion in front of two synchronized cameras. From left to right: walking, running, hopping, jumping, boxing, and Kendo (Japanese sword art). This paper introduces an approach to performance animation that employs video cameras and a small set of retro-reflective markers to create a low-cost, easy-to-use system that might someday be practical for home use. The low-dimensional control signals from the user's performance are supplemented by a database of pre-recorded human motion. At run time, the system automatically learns a series of local models from a set of motion capture examples that are a close match to the marker locations captured by the cameras. These local models are then used to reconstruct the motion of the user as a full-body animation. We demonstrate the power of this approach with real-time control of six different behaviors using two video cameras and a small set of retro-reflective markers. We compare the resulting animation to animation from commercial motion capture equipment with a full set of markers.
Performance animation that employs video cameras and a small set of retro-reflective markers are used in REF .
Performance animation from low-dimensional control signals
SIGGRAPH '05
Computer Science