Methods and systems for generating an animation control rig including posing of non-rigid areas
AssigneeWeta Digital Limited
InventorsThomas Stevenson, Andrew R. Phillips, Edward Sun
Life of this patent
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Abstract
In an embodiment, an animator is provided with an indication when a model's component such as a joint or limb is being moved or twisted in a way that would be unnatural and cause unusual stress on the model component. For example, as a shoulder joint is stressed by moving an arm in an extreme position a yellow bar or coloring of the shoulder, arm or other component can grow increasingly bright and shift to red just before a breaking point is reached. An animator can choose to go past the breaking point and the breaking can be modeled and incorporated into the animation.
Claims8
A computer-implemented method for generating an animation control rig configured to manipulate a non-rigid portion of a digital character, the method comprising:
- associating a control shape with the non-rigid portion of the digital character;
- accepting a signal from a user input control to move the control shape to specify a new pose for the non-rigid portion of the digital character;
- traversing a hierarchical node graph representing a plurality of animation control points associated with the new pose;
- identifying a plurality of nodes that are implicated in moving the digital character to the new pose;
- and
- using the implicated nodes to display the new pose for the non-rigid portion of the digital character.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.