Semantic-Aware Animation of Hand-Drawn Characters

Information

• Publication Type: Master Thesis
• Workgroup(s)/Project(s): not specified
• Date: 2023
• Second Supervisor: Hsiang-Yun Wu
• Open Access: yes
• First Supervisor: Eduard Gröller
• Pages: 91
• Keywords: computer animation, character animation

Abstract

In recent years there has been a lot of research in the area of edutainment, which facilitates effective learning processes by increasing the engagement of the learners. Guided visualisations, such as audio-guided museum tours or Augmented Reality-guided city tours, are one of the potential applications. Guided visualisations are a form of mental practice which traditionally involves verbal guidance that guides a user through a series of visualisations. With the technique of Augmented Reality, one can integrate additional information to guide users or embody verbal guidance with a virtual character, which enables an engaging experience. In this thesis, we aim to make a first step towards guided visualisation by introducing a hand-drawn character for instruction purposes. We especially focus on animation, since character animations are used in different applications, such as computer graphics, but can be hardly generated without certain pre-knowledge. Here, we present a novel pipeline for automatically generating believable movements for hand-drawn characters. The approach consists of five steps. (1) the hand-drawn character is detected from an input image, and (2) the sub-parts of the drawn character, such as the legs and thehead, are identified, respectively. (3) A bone skeleton for animation is extracted and augmented with the semantic information from the previous step. (4) Based on the augmented skeleton, we assign a super-class that the skeleton belongs to, i.e., quadruped, flying or humanoid, and match the end-effectors of the skeleton to the end-effectors of the reference skeleton of the super-class. (5) Finally, we generate a triangular mesh from the input illustration. Once the matching reference skeleton and the hand-drawn character are overlayed, the character is animated and can attract users in different applications. To show the feasibility of our approach, we evaluate the proposed pipeline with a set of hand-drawn characters showing several well-articulate drawings.

Additional Files and Images

Weblinks

• Entry in reposiTUm (TU Wien Publication Database)
• DOI: 10.34726/hss.2023.113969

BibTeX

@mastersthesis{korpitsch-2023-sao,
  title =      "Semantic-Aware Animation of Hand-Drawn Characters",
  author =     "Thorsten Korpitsch",
  year =       "2023",
  abstract =   "In recent years there has been a lot of research in the area
               of edutainment, which facilitates effective learning
               processes by increasing the engagement of the learners.
               Guided visualisations, such as audio-guided museum tours or
               Augmented Reality-guided city tours, are one of the
               potential applications. Guided visualisations are a form of
               mental practice which traditionally involves verbal guidance
               that guides a user through a series of visualisations. With
               the technique of Augmented Reality, one can integrate
               additional information to guide users or embody verbal
               guidance with a virtual character, which enables an engaging
               experience. In this thesis, we aim to make a first step
               towards guided visualisation by introducing a hand-drawn
               character for instruction purposes. We especially focus on
               animation, since character animations are used in different
               applications, such as computer graphics, but can be hardly
               generated without certain pre-knowledge. Here, we present a
               novel pipeline for automatically generating believable
               movements for hand-drawn characters. The approach consists
               of five steps. (1) the hand-drawn character is detected from
               an input image, and (2) the sub-parts of the drawn
               character, such as the legs and thehead, are identified,
               respectively. (3) A bone skeleton for animation is extracted
               and augmented with the semantic information from the
               previous step. (4) Based on the augmented skeleton, we
               assign a super-class that the skeleton belongs to, i.e.,
               quadruped, flying or humanoid, and match the end-effectors
               of the skeleton to the end-effectors of the reference
               skeleton of the super-class. (5) Finally, we generate a
               triangular mesh from the input illustration. Once the
               matching reference skeleton and the hand-drawn character are
               overlayed, the character is animated and can attract users
               in different applications. To show the feasibility of our
               approach, we evaluate the proposed pipeline with a set of
               hand-drawn characters showing several well-articulate
               drawings.",
  pages =      "91",
  address =    "Favoritenstrasse 9-11/E193-02, A-1040 Vienna, Austria",
  school =     "Research Unit of Computer Graphics, Institute of Visual
               Computing and Human-Centered Technology, Faculty of
               Informatics, TU Wien",
  keywords =   "computer animation, character animation",
  URL =        "https://www.cg.tuwien.ac.at/research/publications/2023/korpitsch-2023-sao/",
}