Automatic skeleton-ing system
NewScientist today has an article called “Muscle and bone bring animated characters to life”. It’s an interesting idea. Apparently some researchers in the UK are autmoatically creating bones and muscles underneath the skin of 3D models based on the muscle curvature in the skin.
They’re suggesting that they can more quickly create a realistic skeleton for animators to use, or that it could even be used in medical applications (perhaps after doing a cyberscan of a person’s body). But I’m having a hard time seeing it… the images they show are all of characters with very highly defined muscle tone. Looking at my own body, I have to wonder what kind of results the system would get. It might be a very amusing experiment!
Ha ha! Amen!
I can see teh siggraph lecture now using my body as a sample:
“The curvature of the surface leads us to conclude that this specimen possesses a huge, round ‘abdomen muscle’ and so we’ve built a strong spine to complement it”