Path: utzoo!utgpu!watmath!iuvax!cica!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!shawnee.cis.ohio-state.edu!sarrel
From: sarrel@shawnee.cis.ohio-state.edu (Marc Sarrel)
Newsgroups: comp.graphics
Subject: Re: Best of 1989 SIGGRAPH
Message-ID: 
Date: 9 Aug 89 22:46:14 GMT
References: <89080823183434@masnet.uucp> <5056@alvin.mcnc.org>
Organization: Ohio State Computer Science
Lines: 32
In-reply-to: spl@mcnc.org's message of 9 Aug 89 15:06:33 GMT

In article <5056@alvin.mcnc.org> spl@mcnc.org (Steve Lamont) writes:

   By the way, my own personal choice for best of the show (from a technical
   point of view, not as far as content -- which was practically nil), was
   Eurhythmy by Susan Amkraut and Michael Girard from Ohio State ACCAD.  The
   synthetic camera work was absolutely fabulous.  These folks have obviously
   done *real* cinematography or have studied the subject very intently.  Though
   the dancing figures had the usual computer graphics marionette quality to
   them, the choreography was still marvelous, as well.  Well done!!!!


Well, I've heard Michael Girard give a presentation on the motion
control software he used to control the figures.  He spoke at an
animation seminar course I took here at OSU.  He wrote his entire
dissertation on the subject.  It was _not_ a simple keyframe style
animation.  The animator specifies where, in general, he wants a
figure to go, as well as information about the creature's gate and the
system figures out footfalls and joint angles to satisfy the
animator's desires.  This system can, as shown in the film, handle two
and four legged creatrues.  I've also seen demos of creatures with
many legs (about 14 or 16).  Michael's system also handles changes in
gate in an appropriate way (ie: going from walking to running or
trotting to galloping).  SIGGRAPH was the first time that I had seen
the film in rendered form.  It's been around, in various incarnations,
as a wire frame for quite a while.

--marc
-=-
"Master, why is the letter 'i' the symbol for current?"  "Because there is
no letter 'i' in the word 'current'."  "Master, why do we use the letter
'j' for sqrt(-1)?"  "Because we use the letter 'i' for current."  Whereupon
the Master struck the Disciple, and the Disciple became enlightened.