Thesis (Ph.D.) - University of Queensland, 2005. / Includes bibliography.

Selected Project (M.S.)--Brigham Young University. Dept. of Instructional Psychology and Technology, 2005. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 52-55).

Thesis (M.F.A.)--Rochester Institute of Technology, 2007. / Typescript. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Melbourne, Dept. of Computer Science and Software Engineering, 2009. / Typescript. Name on cover : Patrick Jing Ye. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree Doctor of Technology: Design in the Faculty of Informatics and Design at the Cape Peninsula University of Technology 2013 / Digital drawing and animation, using basic computer software, opens up new possibilities in creative practice-­‐led research. The digital medium, with its relative ease of reproduction and storage of images, facilitates a reflective method of thinking-­‐while-­‐ drawing, thereby stimulating the creative process and providing a unique means of reflection-­‐in-­‐action. The computer’s ability to record images allows for temporal disruption, providing possibilities for exploring alternative creative solutions as well as retrospective, reflection-­‐on-­‐action. This thesis presents an interrogation of the researcher’s creative practice, as well as the findings and creative artefacts of other relevant practitioners in the field of digital drawing, animation, and related creative activities. A reflexive methodology was used to investigate the relationship between making, doing, and knowing in creative practice. The findings are supported by creative outputs (making), reflection on the creative process in relation to supporting literature (doing), and knowledge resulting from this reflection together with related theoretical research (knowing). The research revealed that digital drawing and animation supports new modes of making resulting in the production of original creative artefacts. It was further revealed that in relation to “doing”, the digital medium supports reflective practice by enabling the creative practitioner to document and reflect on these outputs both during and after making. The resulting reflexive actions combined with theoretical research lead to revelations concerning the relationship between thinking and drawing when using digital media as well as in a broader sense. The study thus contributes insights concerning art and design thinking, and makes a contribution to new developments in visual arts and design research. Practice-­‐led research introduces a theoretical paradigm that has methodological implications particularly in the context of the current re-­‐structuring and transformation of art and design education at South African Universities of Technology. The findings indicate that digital drawing and animation can encourage a critical and reflective approach not only in the work of creative practitioners by supporting new modes of making, but that it also has positive implications for visual arts research and teaching. In this regard the research highlights the need for promoting the integration of theory and practice in visual arts and design education curricula.

Avec la complexité croissante des environnements virtuels apparaît le besoin de doter les personnages qui les peuplent d'une plus grande autonomie de mouvement. En plus de marcher, courir et sauter, les simulations interactives actuelles requièrent des personnages qu'ils rampent, escaladent, poussent ou tirent des objets... Ces tâches sont caractérisées par les environnements contraints dans lesquelles elles sont réalisées, qui présentent un risque fort de collision et réduisent fortement les possibilités de mouvement; elles le sont aussi par les forces importantes qui doivent être exercées afin de les réaliser, résultant de la création de contacts. Ces deux aspects rendent la synthèse automatique de mouvements très difficile dans ce contexte. Cette thèse a pour objectif de proposer une méthode automatique pour la synthèse de mouvements en environnements contraints. Pour ce faire, deux problématiques de recherche ont été posées et étudiées. La première partie de la thèse porte sur la question de la génération de contacts pertinents pour la réalisation des tâches considérées. Une nouvelle heuristique appelée EFORT (Extended FORce Transmission ratio) est présentée ; elle permet d’évaluer la compatibilité d’une posture de contact avec la tâche demandée. Cette heuristique est au coeur d’une méthode pour la génération temps réel de postures de contact. Cette méthode s’applique pour des personnages et des environnements arbitraires, et peut être directement intégrée au sein de simulations interactives telles que les jeux vidéo. La deuxième partie porte sur le problème plus global de la recherche d’une trajectoire pertinente dans un environnement contraint. Cette recherche de trajectoire passe par la recherche d’une séquence de postures de contact qui vont permettre le mouvement. Une nouvelle méthode de planification de mouvement s’appuyant sur EFORT est donc proposée. Parce qu’elle est une des premières à simultanément considérer la complexité de l’environnement et la pertinence des configurations générées au regard de la tâche à accomplir, notre méthode constitue un pas significatif vers une plus grande autonomie de mouvement pour les personnages virtuels. / With the growing complexity of virtual environments comes the need to provide virtual characters with a larger autonomy of motion. Additionally to walking, running and jumping, state of the art virtual applications require characters to climb, crawl, pull or push objects... Those tasks are characterized by the constrained environments in which they are achieved, where the risk of collision is high and motion capabilities are limited; they are also associated with important force exertion, resulting from contact creation. In this context, automatic motion synthesis is really difficult. This thesis aims at proposing an automatic method for motion synthesis in constrained environments. To achieve these goals, two research problems have been identified and studied. The first part is dedicated to the issue of generating contact postures compatible to achieve the considered tasks. We propose a new heuristic called EFORT (Extended FORce Transmission ratio). EFORT is used to evaluate the compatibility of a contact posture with the requested task. EFORT lies at the center of a new method for the real time generation of task efficient contact configurations. This generator finds its applications for arbitrary virtual characters and environment, and as such can be directly integrated within video game applications. The second part of this thesis focuses on the more global issue of computing a relevant trajectory in a constrained environment. This issue is seen as the search for a sequence of task efficient contact postures, suited for achieving the task. Consequently a new motion planner based on EFORT is proposed. Because it is one of the first to simultaneously address the complexity of the environment and task efficiency, our motion planner is a significant step towards an enhanced autonomy of motion for virtual characters.

This work addresses various applications pertaining to the design, modelling and animation of parametric surfaces using elliptic Partial Differential Equations (PDE) which are produced via the PDE method. Compared with traditional surface generation techniques, the PDE method is an effective technique that can represent complex three-dimensional (3D) geometries in terms of a relatively small set of parameters. A PDE-based surface can be produced from a set of pre-configured curves that are used as the boundary conditions to solve a number of PDE. An important advantage of using this method is that most of the information required to define a surface is contained at its boundary. Thus, complex surfaces can be computed using only a small set of design parameters. In order to exploit the advantages of this methodology various applications were developed that vary from the interactive design of aircraft configurations to the animation of facial expressions in a computer-human interaction system that utilizes an artificial intelligence (AI) bot for real time conversation. Additional applications of generating cyclic motions for PDE based human character integrated in a Computer-Aided Design (CAD) package as well as developing techniques to describe a given mesh geometry by a set of boundary conditions, required to evaluate the PDE method, are presented. Each methodology presents a novel approach for interacting with parametric surfaces obtained by the PDE method. This is due to the several advantages this surface generation technique has to offer. Additionally, each application developed in this thesis focuses on a specific target that delivers efficiently various operations in the design, modelling and animation of such surfaces.

One of the fastest developing areas in the entertainment industry is digital animation. Television programmes and movies frequently use 3D animations to enhance or replace actors and scenery. With the increase in computing power, research is also being done to apply these animations in an interactive manner. Two of the biggest obstacles to the success of these undertakings are control (manipulating the models) and realism. This text describes many of the ways to improve control and realism aspects, in such a way that interactive animation becomes possible. Specifically, lip-synchronisation (driven by human speech), and various modeling and rendering techniques are discussed. A prototype that shows that interactive animation is feasible, is also described. / Mr. A. Hardy Prof. S. von Solms

The design of autonomous agents capable of performing a given goal in a 3D domain continues to be a challenge for computer animated story generation systems. We present a novel prototype which consists of a 3D engine and a planner for a simple virtual world. We incorporate the 2D planner into the 3D engine to provide 3D animations. Based on the plan, the 3D world is created and the objects are positioned. Then the plan is linearized into simpler actions for object animation and rendered via the 3D engine. We use JINNI3D as the engine and WARPLAN-C as the planner for the above-mentioned prototype. The user can interact with the system using a simple natural language interface. The interface consists of a shallow parser, which is capable of identifying a set of predefined basic commands. The command given by the user is considered as the goal for the planner. The resulting plan is created and rendered in 3D. The overall system is comparable to a character based interactive story generation system except that it is limited to the predefined 3D environment.

“The untrained body, like the sculptor's marble, can express nothing but its own limitations” (Lust 70). As acting styles have changed through the years, corresponding schools of thought have arisen to prepare performers for their unique challenges. Perhaps the goal of producing a “gripping performance,” one in which the audience is truly invested, has remained the same since the time of Thespis. How one arrives at this desired result, however, has varied greatly through the ages. Techniques, not surprisingly, tend to build on previous theories, beliefs and practices. Étienne Decroux’s corporeal mime technique builds on the teachings of Jacques Copeau, but as a result, takes the art form into a radically new direction. Vsevolod Meyerhold studied with Stanislavski, learning his inside-out approach to performance, and, with biomechanics, creates a performance technique that turns Stanislavski’s approach on its head. The point is not that these theorists developed something that undermines the previous work, but that they built their theories from knowledge of older techniques. In essence, these theorists learned from the past to prepare for the future. Advancements in film technology have dramatically changed both the nature of film, and performance, itself. Computer-generated characters and environments are becoming more commonplace in film due to the flexibility they provide in composing shots, and the relatively low price tag that comes with them. Technology still can’t replace the subtlety that comes from a human performance, so currently, actors find themselves in the unique position of having one foot in the real world and the other foot in the virtual world. The motion-capture process, or moCap, is the best example of this unique relationship. By placing sensors at key joints on an actor’s body, their performance can be tracked by a computer and then directly applied to a computer-generated model (Hooks 30). In a iv sense, it’s digital puppetry. Because only the movements are being recorded and not the actor’s physical appearance, performers can play parts that are not necessarily their physical type or even their own species. Director Peter Jackson cast Andy Serkis to play a forty-foot-tall ape in the 2005 remake of King Kong, and thanks to the motion-capture process, the result is a perfect blend of live acting and computer-generated graphics. The relatively low cost and flexibility of this process has made it available, not just to filmmakers in Hollywood, but also to the independent market. I am currently directing a feature length film that utilizes both computergenerated backgrounds and virtual characters accomplished through the motion-capture process. This production has been in the works since I started graduate school. As I learn more and more about specific acting techniques in class, I am always looking for something that I could apply specifically to motion-capture performance. Currently there is little research on the topic and certainly, there’s no specific acting theory that applies to this medium. In this paper I hope to formulate an acting technique that is tailored for the field of motion-capture performance, building upon theories of the past. Further study in this technique will better prepare future performers in this field, as well as provide insights for directors new to the medium. The following three techniques in particular, each with their emphasis on an outside-in approach to acting, will provide the basis for this theory: Meyerhold’s biomechanics; Decroux’s corporeal mime; and Edward Gordon Craig’s uber-marionette concept. I will provide detailed sections on each one of these approaches, discussing the theoretical sides of each, as well as specific exercises students in these schools are asked to perform. Next, I will provide a detailed section on the motion-capture process, discussing how it works and the challenges it presents to performers. Finally I will apply each one of the three theories to the motion-capture process, v finding points where the theories apply and also where they fall short. By choosing specifically what applies to the moCap process from each one of the techniques, we will be left with a new theory that specifically relates to virtual performance. This will not only serve as an invaluable guide to both future performers and directors entering the field of motion capture, but will hopefully be the beginnings of an acting theory that can bring performance education programs into the 21st century. Working in the virtual realm requires a performer to use his imagination, but having training and knowledge in theories of the past will mean the imagination is not the only thing actors have to work with.