Feature matching and affine transformation for 2D cell animation

This paper presents an application for feature matching and affine transformation in computer graphics. The study case considered is 2D cell animation, which is still a labor-intensive process in current cartoon film production. One key problem in automating 2D cell animation in inbetween frame generation. The objective of our work is to investigate how to automatically generate inbetweening from pairs of hand-drawn 2D key frames. Our technique first establishes the correspondence of feature points and then estimates the affine transformation between each pair of 2D key frames. The inbetween frames are then automatically generated by interpolation.     

Feature- and region-based auto painting for 2D animation

This paper presents a novel approach to automating the entire coloring process in traditional cel animation production. A feature-based region-matching algorithm is proposed. It first matches a set of master frames to construct correspondences between regions in the master frames and extract a stable topology. The first frame of each scene is then colored based on the set of master frames. With the painted first frame and established stable topology, each region in subsequent frames is matched with regions in the previous frames and colored. Compared with other algorithms, our approach is able to handle bigger changes between frames and automatically color the first frame of each sequence.     

基于色彩空间分块匹配的三维动画融合技术

为了提高影视动画制作的三维图像成像质量,需要进行动画图像的动态信息融合处理,提出一种基于二维色彩空间分块匹配的三维动画图像的动态信息融合处理技术,采用虚拟视景重构技术进行三维动画图像采集和特征投影处理,对三维动画图像进行二值拟合和边缘轮廓检测,采用RGB分解技术进行三维动画图像的颜色分量提取,采用颜色模板空间投影算法进行三维动画图像的分块融合处理,提高三维动画图像的边缘像素点的特征配对性能,结合三维动画图像的色彩空间分块融合结果进行像素特征优化配置,计算匹配窗口相关系数,实现三维动画图像的动态信息融合处理。仿真结果表明,采用该方法进行三维动画图像的动态信息融合处理,能提高图像输出峰值信噪比,提高动态成像质量。     

Attributed point matching for automatic groundtruth generation

Geometric groundtruth at the character, word, and line levels is crucial for designing and evaluating optical character recognition (OCR) algorithms. Kanungo and Haralick proposed a closed-loop methodology for generating geometric groundtruth for rescanned document images. The procedure assumed that the original image and the corresponding groundtruth were available. It automatically registered the original image to the rescanned one using four corner points and then transformed the original groundtruth using the estimated registration transformation. In this paper, we present an attributed branch-and-bound algorithm for establishing the point correspondence that uses all the data points. We group the original feature points into blobs and use corners of blobs for matching. The Euclidean distance between character centroids is used as the error metric. We conducted experiments on synthetic point sets with varying layout complexity to characterize the performance of two matching algorithms. We also report results on experiments conducted using the University of Washington dataset. Finally, we show examples of application of this methodology for generating groundtruth for microfilmed and FAXed versions of the University of Washington dataset documents. Received: July 24, 2001 / Accepted: May 20, 2002     

Query by video clip

Typical digital video search is based on queries involving a single shot. We generalize this problem by allowing queries that involve a video clip (say, a 10-s video segment). We propose two schemes: (i) retrieval based on key frames follows the traditional approach of identifying shots, computing key frames from a video, and then extracting image features around the key frames. For each key frame in the query, a similarity value (using color, texture, and motion) is obtained with respect to the key frames in the database video. Consecutive key frames in the database video that are highly similar to the query key frames are then used to generate the set of retrieved video clips. (ii) In retrieval using sub-sampled frames, we uniformly sub-sample the query clip as well as the database video. Retrieval is based on matching color and texture features of the sub-sampled frames. Initial experiments on two video databases (basketball video with approximately 16,000 frames and a CNN news video with approximately 20,000 frames) show promising results. Additional experiments using segments from one basketball video as query and a different basketball video as the database show the effectiveness of feature representation and matching schemes.     

Building a color classification system for textured and hue homogeneous surfaces: system calibration and algorithm

We present a system for classifying the color aspect of textured surfaces having a nearly constant hue (such as wooden boards, textiles, wallpaper, etc.). The system is designed to compensate for small fluctuations (over time) of the light source and for inhomogeneous illumination conditions (shading correction). This is an important feature because even in industrial environments where the lighting conditions are controlled, a constant and homogeneous illumination cannot be guaranteed. Together with an appropriate camera calibration (which includes a periodic update), our approach offers a robust system which is able to “distinguish” (i.e., classify correctly) between surface classes which exhibit visually barely perceptible color variations. In particular, our approach is based on relative (not absolute) color measurements. In this paper, we outline the classification algorithm while focusing in detail on the camera calibration and a method for compensating for fluctuations of the light source. Received: 1 September 1998 / Accepted: 16 March 2000     

Robust classification of arbitrary object classes based on hierarchical spatial feature-matching

We present a novel approach to the robust classification of arbitrary object classes in complex, natural scenes. Starting from a re-appraisal of Marr's ‘primal sketch’, we develop an algorithm that (1) employs local orientations as the fundamental picture primitives, rather than the more usual edge locations, (2) retains and exploits the local spatial arrangement of features of different complexity in an image and (3) is hierarchically arranged so that the level of feature abstraction increases at each processing stage. The resulting, simple technique is based on the accumulation of evidence in binary channels, followed by a weighted, non-linear sum of the evidence accumulators. The steps involved in designing a template for recognizing a simple object are explained. The practical application of the algorithm is illustrated, with examples taken from a broad range of object classification problems. We discuss the performance of the algorithm and describe a hardware implementation. First successful attempts to train the algorithm, automatically, are presented. Finally, we compare our algorithm with other object classification algorithms described in the literature.     

Animating Formal Specifications with Inheritance in a DL-Based Framework

Dynamic logic (DL) provides a suitable formal framework to model actions and reasoning about them. <$>\cal OASIS<$> is a language for the specification of object-oriented conceptual models. In our model, specialisation is a relation between classes that defines an inheritance mechanism through static and dynamic partitions. A variant of DL (including the deontic operators for permission, prohibition and obligation) is the formalism used in <$>\cal OASIS<$> to deal with changes of state, triggers, preconditions, protocols and operations. The animation of conceptual models in order to validate the specification is an interesting topic. We have worked on translating <$>\cal OASIS<$> specifications automatically to concurrent environments in order to obtain a prototype useful to validate specifications by animation. The aim of this paper is to show that it is feasible to translate static and dynamic partitions automatically into dynamic logic formulae. Thus, using the same developed schema of animation it is possible to execute <$>\cal OASIS<$> specifications including inheritance.     

相似动画视频片段探测方法

为了实现相似视频片段的快速探测,以动画视频片段为研究对象,提出一种建立在视频单元层上的动画视频片段探测方法.在视频特征描述阶段,采用更符合动画图像的Markov平稳特征来描述动画视频帧的视觉特征,并利用视频距离轨迹(VDT)来挖掘视频片段特征,同时采用线性拟合特征的描述方法来描述VDT的特征;在特征匹配阶段,将视频片段匹配问题转换为网络流优化的问题,通过将视频单元的时间一致性嵌入到匹配网络中来寻找最佳对齐方式,大幅度减少了匹配的数据量.实验结果表明,该方法极大地改善了相似视频片段的探测效果,与传统的视频匹配方法相比,其具有更好的鲁棒性以及更高的效率.     

基于冲击滤波器的视频图像卡通化算法

传统二维卡通绘制的专业性和复杂性导致普通用户参与性较低。为此,提出一种基于冲击滤波器的视频图像卡通化算法。应用改进的冲击滤波器对彩色视频图像进行颜色聚类和噪声消除,对冲击滤波后的图像使用高斯差分算子进行边缘检测,并做颜色量化处理,融合边缘曲线和量化图像生成个性化的卡通图像。实验结果表明,与基于双边滤波器、Osher冲击滤波器、Alvarez冲击滤波器以及改进Osher冲击滤波器的图像卡通化算法相比,该算法能够获得更清晰、完整、光滑和连续的边缘曲线,风格化图像的视觉显著性更强,保真度更高,并能通过系列图像的风格化转换自动生成个性化的卡通视频。     

Performance‐driven animation of hand‐drawn cartoon faces

We present a novel performance‐driven approach to animating cartoon faces starting from pure 2D drawings. A 3D approximate facial model automatically built from front and side view master frames of character drawings is introduced to enable the animated cartoon faces to be viewed from angles different from that in the input video. The expressive mappings are built by artificial neural network (ANN) trained from the examples of the real face in the video and the cartoon facial drawings in the facial expression graph for a specific character. The learned mapping model makes the resultant facial animation to properly get the desired expressiveness, instead of a mere reproduction of the facial actions in the input video sequence. Furthermore, the lit sphere, capturing the lighting in the painting artwork of faces, is utilized to color the cartoon faces in terms of the 3D approximate facial model, reinforcing the hand‐drawn appearance of the resulting facial animation. We made a series of comparative experiments to test the effectiveness of our method by recreating the facial expression in the commercial animation. The comparison results clearly demonstrate the superiority of our method not only in generating high quality cartoon‐style facial expressions, but also in speeding up the animation production of cartoon faces. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

基于人脸特征分析的卡通人脸动画系统

给出一个基于人脸特征分析的卡通人脸动画系统,其输入是一张二维真实人脸照片和一段文本,输出为具有娱乐效果的卡通人脸动画。该文采用基于人脸特征分析的卡通人脸肖像生成方法,在卡通肖像的基础上结合文本驱动产生卡通人脸动画。将系统移植到移动平台,在手机上生成卡通人脸动画。实验结果表明该系统在PDA上能产生较好的娱乐效果。     

多通道CartoonGAN下的图像风格动漫化

为解决真实图像转换为动漫风格图像出现的参数量大、图像纹理和颜色损失的问题,提出了一种多通道卡通生成对抗网络(MC_CartoonGAN).首先,使用HSCNN+(advanced CNNs for the hyperspectral reconstruction task)和遗传算法重新构建多通道图像数据集,丰富图像信息.其次,利用DenseNet网络进行特征复用减少参数的内存占用率及缓解梯度消失的问题.最后,引入多通道颜色重建损失函数,在保证了生成图像内容完整的情况下,降低了生成图像的颜色损失.实验结果表明,提出的多通道卡通生成对抗网络将真实图像转换成动漫风格图像的质量更优.     

Automatic performance evaluation of printed Chinese character recognition systems

Performance evaluation is crucial for improving the performance of OCR systems. However, this is trivial and sophisticated work to do by hand. Therefore, we have developed an automatic performance evaluation system for a printed Chinese character recognition (PCCR) system. Our system is characterized by using real-world data as test data and automatically obtaining the performance of the PCCR system by comparing the correct text and the recognition result of the document image. In addition, our performance evaluation system also provides some evaluation of performance for the segmentation module, the classification module, and the post-processing module of the PCCR system. For this purpose, a segmentation error-tolerant character-string matching algorithm is proposed to obtain the correspondence between the correct text and the recognition result. The experiments show that our performance evaluation system is an accurate and powerful tool for studying deficiencies in the PCCR system. Although our approach is aimed at the PCCR system, the idea also can be applied to other OCR systems.     

A survey of approaches to automatic schema matching

Schema matching is a basic problem in many database application domains, such as data integration, E-business, data warehousing, and semantic query processing. In current implementations, schema matching is typically performed manually, which has significant limitations. On the other hand, previous research papers have proposed many techniques to achieve a partial automation of the match operation for specific application domains. We present a taxonomy that covers many of these existing approaches, and we describe the approaches in some detail. In particular, we distinguish between schema-level and instance-level, element-level and structure-level, and language-based and constraint-based matchers. Based on our classification we review some previous match implementations thereby indicating which part of the solution space they cover. We intend our taxonomy and review of past work to be useful when comparing different approaches to schema matching, when developing a new match algorithm, and when implementing a schema matching component. Received: 5 February 2001 / Accepted: 6 September 2001 Published online: 21 November 2001     

EXCOL: an EXtract-and-COmplete layering approach to cartoon animation reusing

We introduce the EXtract-and-COmplete Layering method (EXCOL)--a novel cartoon animation processing technique to convert a traditional animated cartoon video into multiple semantically meaningful layers. Our technique is inspired by vision-based layering techniques but focuses on shape cues in both the extraction and completion steps to reflect the unique characteristics of cartoon animation. For layer extraction, we define a novel similarity measure incorporating both shape and color of automatically segmented regions within individual frames and propagate a small set of user-specified layer labels among similar regions across frames. By clustering regions with the same labels, each frame is appropriately partitioned into different layers, with each layer containing semantically meaningful content. Then, a warping-based approach is used to fill missing parts caused by occlusion within the extracted layers to achieve a complete representation. EXCOL provides a flexible way to effectively reuse traditional cartoon animations with only a small amount of user interaction. It is demonstrated that our EXCOL method is effective and robust, and the layered representation benefits a variety of applications in cartoon animation processing.     

Image retrieval using efficient local-area matching

We present an efficient and accurate method for retrieving images based on color similarity with a given query image or histogram. The method matches the query against parts of the image using histogram intersection. Efficient searching for the best matching subimage is done by pruning the set of subimages using upper bound estimates. The method is fast, has high precision and recall and also allows queries based on the positions of one or more objects in the database image. Experimental results showing the efficiency of the proposed search method, and high precision and recall of retrieval are presented. Received: 20 January 1997 / Accepted: 5 January 1998     

The GMAP: a versatile tool for physical data independence

Physical data independence is touted as a central feature of modern database systems. It allows users to frame queries in terms of the logical structure of the data, letting a query processor automatically translate them into optimal plans that access physical storage structures. Both relational and object-oriented systems, however, force users to frame their queries in terms of a logical schema that is directly tied to physical structures. We present an approach that eliminates this dependence. All storage structures are defined in a declarative language based on relational algebra as functions of a logical schema. We present an algorithm, integrated with a conventional query optimizer, that translates queries over this logical schema into plans that access the storage structures. We also show how to compile update requests into plans that update all relevant storage structures consistently and optimally. Finally, we report on experiments with a prototype implementation of our approach that demonstrate how it allows storage structures to be tuned to the expected or observed workload to achieve significantly better performance than is possible with conventional techniques. Edited by Matthias Jarke, Jorge Bocca, Carlo Zaniolo. Received September 15, 1994 / Accepted September 1, 1995     

Controlling a camera in a virtual environment

image-based control or visual servoing approach. It consists of positioning a camera according to the information perceived in the image. This is thus a very intuitive approach of animation. To be able to react automatically to modifications of the environment, we also considered the introduction of constraints into the control. This approach is thus adapted to highly reactive contexts (virtual reality, video games). Numerous examples dealing with classic problems in animation are considered within this framework and presented in this paper. Published online: 19 July 2001     

手机3D动画自动生成系统中的色彩规划

手机3D动画自动生成系统依据短信内容,自动生成相应的3D动画并随原短信一同发送给接收方.色彩规划是其中一个重要环节,它根据短信主题和动画场景信息对动画的色彩进行规划,修改场景中物体颜色.提出了一种基于语义网技术的规划方法,结合色彩知识建立知识库,通过情节推理,找到和短信主题色彩意象匹配的配色方案,再根据动画场景信息对配色方案进行筛选,最后细化到每个物体的颜色.色彩规划弥补了自动生成的动画在视觉效果上千篇一律、单调乏味的缺陷,增强了动画的灵活性、多变性.