Video Paintbox: The fine art of video painting

We present the Video Paintbox; a novel system capable of transforming video into stylised animations. Our system solves the problem of temporally coherent painting for a wide class of video, and is able to introduce cartoon-like motion emphasis cues. Coherent painting in video is a long-standing problem that is associated with the difficulties in placing, orienting, and sizing paint strokes over time. Our solution allows removal of stroke flicker, allowing animators control over any stylisation and incoherence they might care to re-introduce. Furthermore, the animator can choose to selectively paint certain objects, leaving photorealistic video elsewhere. Many common motion cues used by animators, such as streak-lines, squash-and-stretch, and anticipated movement may be integrated with either real or painted footage. The motion cues depend on a robust analysis of video that allows for effects such as camera motion and occlusion, and which is able to automatically build articulated dolls complete with kinematic properties. We describe our Video Paintbox, discuss animator controls, and illustrate with examples.     

Video motion analysis for the synthesis of dynamic cues and Futurist art

This paper presents new methods for stylising video to produce cartoon motion emphasis cues and modern art. Specifically, we introduce “dynamic cues” as a class of motion emphasis cue, encompassing traditional animation techniques such as anticipation and motion exaggeration. We describe methods for automatically synthesising such cues within video premised upon the recovery of articulated figures, and the subsequent manipulation of the recovered pose trajectories. Additionally, we show how our motion emphasis framework may be applied to emulate artwork in the Futurist style, popularised by Duchamp.     

Volumetric texture synthesis for non-photorealistic volume rendering of medical data

This paper presents a novel technique, called volumetric texture synthesis, for non-photorealistic volume rendering. It extends texture synthesis from 2D areas/3D surfaces to volumes. By selecting different texture samples, it allows for a wide variety of stylized rendering for the target volume. As a preprocessing step, volume data analysis is used to identify texture orientations for the volume. This is followed by volumetric texture synthesis, which generates 3D non-photorealistic textures along the identified texture orientations. Finally, standard volume rendering is applied to display the volume data decorated by the texture. Experimental results are provided in the paper.     

Building blocks for goal-directed motion

An approach for the integration of intelligent goal directed motion within an interactive real-time computer animation environment is sketched. The approach is based on a cause-and-effect model for intelligent goal direction motion which gives rise to types of motion primitives: one is the application of a so called multi-track recording paradigm for direction motion manipulation; the second is an algorithm to mimic a control system for goal directed motion of joints in a multi-link structure. The techniques described here are features of the procedure based animation system which is described in Reference 1.     

Graphical interface for motion editing using procedure visualization

In this paper, we introduce an interface for motion editing that visualizes editing procedures. For intuitive understanding and construction of motion editing procedures, our system represents an editing element that produces modified motion from a given input motion as a graphical node, and enables user to construct a whole motion editing procedure by connecting the nodes with a few mouse interactions. The system provides both the 3D transform manipulator and the time-line slider for intuitive controlling ...     

Constraint-based motion adaptation

Today's computer animators have access to many systems and techniques to author high-quality motion. Unfortunately, available techniques typically produce a particular motion for a specific character. In this paper we present a constraint-based approach to adapt previously created motions to new situations and characters. We combine constraint methods that compute changes to motion to meet specified needs with motion signal processing methods that modify signals yet preserve desired properties of the original motion. The combination allows the adaptation of motions to meet new goals while retaining much of the motion's original quality. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Skeleton-enhanced line drawings for 3D models

We present a novel line drawing approach for 3D models by introducing their skeleton information into the rendering process. Based on the silhouettes of the input 3D models, we first extract feature lines in geometric regions by utilizing their curvature, torsion and view-dependent information. Then, the skeletons of the models are extracted by our newly developed skeleton extraction algorithm. After that, we draw the skeleton-guided lines from non-geometric regions through the skeleton information. These lines are combined with the feature lines to render the final line drawing result using the line optimization. Experimental results show that our algorithm can render line drawings more effectively with enhanced skeletons. The resulting artistic effects can capture the local geometries as well as the global skeletons of the input 3D models.     

Pencil-like sketch rendering of 3D scenes using trajectory planning and dynamic tracking

Objective: We present a new non-photorealistic rendering method to render 3D scenes in the form of pencil-like sketches.Methods: This work is based on the observation that the dynamic feedback mechanism involving the human visual system and the motor control of the hand collectively generates the visual characteristics unique to hand-drawn sketches. At the heart of our approach is a trajectory planning and tracking algorithm that generate the sketch in multiple layers using a dynamic pen model. On each layer, a set of target strokes are generated from the silhouette lines, edges, and shaded regions which serve as the target trajectory for a closed-loop dynamic pen model. The pen model then produces the rendered sketch, whose characteristics can be adjusted with a set of trajectory and tracking parameters. This process continues in several layers until the tonal difference between the sketch and the original 3D render is minimized.Results: We demonstrate our approach with examples that are created by controlling the parameters of our sketch rendering algorithms.Conclusion: The examples not only show typical sketching artifacts that are common to human-drawn sketches but also demonstrate that it is capable of producing multiple sketching styles.     

Use of non-photorealistic rendering and photometric stereo in making bas-reliefs from photographs

Automatic bas-relief generation from 2D photographs potentially has applications to coinage, commemorative medals and souvenirs. However, current methods are not yet ready for real use in industry due to insufficient artistic effect, noticeable distortion, and unbalanced contrast. We previously proposed a shape-from-shading (SFS) based method to automatically generate bas-reliefs from single frontal photographs of human faces; however, suppression of unwanted details remained a problem. Here, we give experimental results showing how incorporating non-photorealistic rendering (NPR) into our previous framework enables us to both suppress unwanted detail, and yet also emphasize important features. We have consider an alternative approach to recovering relief shape, based on photometric stereo instead of SFS for surface orientation estimation. This can effectively reduce the computational time.