Animation People at UBC

• MichielVanDePanne
• KangKangYin
• KevinLoken
• RoeyFlor
• HerbertChow (undergrad)

What I'd like to learn this summer

• Refresh and get better with all this Machine Learning stuff

Summer Project Ideas

• Some very abstract ideas...
  • 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.

Personal Interests (beside CG)

• VancouverRestaurants
• My blog about boardgames (in french)

Technical Links

• WelcomeGuest to learn TWiki
• Sandbox web to try out TWiki
• PhilippeBeaudoinSandbox just for me

Personal Preferences (details in TWikiVariables)

• Show tool-tip topic info on mouse-over of WikiWord links, on or off: (see details in TWikiPreferences)
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• Vertical size of text edit box:
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• Style of text edit box. width: 99% for full window width (default), width: auto to disable.
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• Optionally write protect your home page: (set it to your WikiName)
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