PhilippeBeaudoin < Main

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   * Name: Philippe Beaudoin
   * Login Name: beaudoin
   * Email: beaudoin@cs.ubc.ca
   * Phone: (604) 827-3992
   * Office: X653
   * Lab: X660 (Imager lab)
   * Comment: Post-Doc with Michiel van de Panne in the [[https://bugs.cs.ubc.ca/cgi-bin/twiki/view/TWiki/Imager?topic=Imager.WebHome][Imager Lab]] (until January 2010).

---++About Me

<div style="width: 103px; float: left;"><img src="http://www.iro.umontreal.ca/~beaudoin/plateaux/images/beaudoin.jpg" alt="Philippe Beaudoin" /></div>I completed a Ph. D. in computer graphics at University of Montreal under the supervision of [[http://www.iro.umontreal.ca/~poulin/ Pierre Poulin]]. My main research interest is data-driven character animation.

More information can be found on my [[http://www.cs.ubc.ca/~beaudoin Home Page]]

<div style="clear: left;" /><br />

---++Animation links
   * Imager.CharacterAnimationHome
   * Imager.CAProjectIdeas
   * Imager.CharacterAnimationGroup

---++Teaching links

   * Faculty.TeachingTips


---++Various Project Ideas
   * In-depth study of motion alignment
      * It seems like distance-based motion alignment is a difficult problem: a punch to the left and a punch to the right will almost necessarily not get aligned right. A good alignment would aligh the extremas of these punches, but this is the "worst case" for a distance-based technique.
      * Investigate how other techniques behave: aligning velocities, accelerations, blending-based alignment.
      * Blending-based alignment: find an alignment so that for any blending ratio, the blended motion introduces/destroy as few frequency components as possible.
      * Blending-based alignment can probably be casted entirely in the frequency domain, an interesting theoretical project.
      * Thoroughly study n-way alignment
      * Build parameterized blend spaces
      * Perform a user-study to evaluate the quality of the resulting motion
      * Study the effect of modifying the blending parameter during the motion
      * Evaluate the physical correctness of the various approach, or with an evolving blending parameter
   * Motion synthesis in wavelet space
      * When compressing, study if similar motions have a similar optimal truncated wavelet coefficient distribution.
      * If so, then use this fact (together with PCA?) to reduce the search space for various kinematic motion synthesis.
   * Throwing and catching
      * Acquire mocap data for a character catching an object (a ball?)
      * Parameterize on:
         * Catching location
         * Object speed and mass
      * Kinematically synthesize a novel motion given arbitrary parameters
   * Efficient real-time exploration of a distant motion-capture database
      * Motions are transmitted across a slow channel (ie. the internet)
      * Simultaneously display a bunch of huge bunch of animations (on the same ground plane, with a wide perspective view)
      * Use wavelet-based progressive motion compression to obtain adaptive level-of-detail
         * Motion far from the viewer is less detailed
         * Automatic and nice degradation when transmission slows down
      * Use streaming transmission
      * Spatially regroup animations according to similarity
      * Automatixally extract a motion hierarchy based on similarity 
         * Display a sample motion for a a complete group of similar motion that can later be "opened up"
   * Compression related projects
      * Develop and study more involved _spatial_ compressions
         * PCA across the DOFs with pre- or post-wavelet compression (useful for large database compression)
         * Use automatic motion segmentation (Barbic et al. 2004) and pre-canned linear spaces adapted to the extracted clip
         * Dictionnary-based methods for large database (problem: building an efficient dictionnary of motion clips)
      * Study the importance of various errors in human perception of skeletal animations
      * Apply compression to complex animation data structures
         * Motion Graphs
         * Specialized database for synthesis of a specific kind of motion
      * Constaint enforcement during compression
         * Constrain extremal poses and derivatives (for inclusion in a "snap-together" style of motion graph, or for cycling motions)
         * 2-person interaction (dancing...) where animations constrain each other.
      * Efficient motion blending using a wavelet basis
      * Develop and study prediction-correction schemes (similar to MPEG motion compensation)
      * Build and use statistical motion models to increase compression efficiency
         * The model could be for a complete skeleton or part of a skeleton
         * The model could be specific (extracted from a small bank of similar motions) or generic (extracted from a large motion database)
         * The model could be for really short motion segments or for complete clips
         * Better yet, it could be multi-resolution: long clips for wide basis functions and short clips for narrow basis functions.

---++Random thoughts
   * Definition of "action", "motion" and "state" in a dynamical-system vocabulary
      * An active dynamical system D is a triplet (S,M,A) that contains a set of states, motions and actions. (none of these needs to be finite)
      * A motion _m_:S->S is a function of the state space into itself. This means that, given any specific motion from M, a state _s_ can only be mapped towards a single other state _s'_. In other words, under a fixed motion, trajectory lines cannot cross.
      * An action _a_:M->M is a function of the motion space into itself. In other words, if we notice trajectory line that crosses, it means an action has been applied.
      * A projection of D towards D' = (S',M',A') is a transformation T:S->S' of the state space such that S' is of lower dimensionality than S. Moreover, for any _m_ in M there exist _m'_ in M' such that _m_ (_s_) = _s'_  <==>  _m'_ (T(_s_)) = T(_s'_). Similarly for the actions.
      * In other words, a projection reduces the dimensionality of the state space, but does not introduce crossings in the trajectories for any motion.
      * A reduced dynamical system D is such that it cannot be projected in any way.

---++Personal Interests (beside CG)
   * Grads.VancouverRestaurants
   * [[http://www.iro.umontreal.ca/~beaudoin/plateaux][My blog about boardgames]] (in french)

---++Technical Links
   * %TWIKIWEB%.WelcomeGuest to learn TWiki
   * Sandbox.WebHome web to try out TWiki
   * Sandbox.%TOPIC%Sandbox just for me

---++Personal Preferences (details in %TWIKIWEB%.TWikiVariables)
   * Show tool-tip topic info on mouse-over of %TWIKIWEB%.WikiWord links, on or off: (see details in %TWIKIWEB%.%WIKIPREFSTOPIC%)
      * Set LINKTOOLTIPINFO = off
   * Horizontal size of text edit box:
      * Set EDITBOXWIDTH = 70
   * Vertical size of text edit box:
      * Set EDITBOXHEIGHT = 22
   * Style of text edit box. =width: 99%= for full window width (default), =width: auto= to disable.
      * Set EDITBOXSTYLE = width: 99%
   * Optionally write protect your home page: (set it to your %TWIKIWEB%.WikiName)
      * Set ALLOWTOPICCHANGE = 

---++Related topics
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-- Main.PhilippeBeaudoin - 04 Feb 2009
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Topic revision: r8 - 2009-02-16 - PhilippeBeaudoin