Background. In this thesis a novel method of skinning a mesh utilizing Nvidia’sTuring Mesh Shader pipeline is presented. Skinning a mesh is often performed with a Vertex Shader or a Compute Shader. By leveraging the strengths of the new pipeline it may be possible to further optimize the skinning process and increase performance, especially for more complex meshes. Objectives. The aim is to determine if the novel method is a suitable replacement for existing skinning implementations. The key metrics being studied is the total GPU frame time of the novel implementation in relation to the rest, and its total memory usage. Methods. Beyond the pre-existing implementations such as Vertex Shader skinning and Compute Shader skinning, two new methods using Mesh Shaders are implemented. The first implementation being a naive method that simply divides the mesh into meshlets and skins each meshlet in isolation. The proposed novel common influences method instead takes the skinning data, such as the joint influences of each vertex, into account when generating meshlets. The intention is to produce meshlets where all vertices are influenced by the same joints, allowing for information to be moved from a per vertex basis to a per meshlet basis. Allowing for fewer fetches to occur in the shader at run-time and potentially better performance. Results. The results indicate that utilizing Mesh Shaders results in approximately identical performance compared to Vertex Shader skinning, (which was observed to be the fastest of the previous implementations) with the novel implementation being marginally slower due to the increased number of meshlets generated. Mesh Shading has the potential to be faster if optimizations unique to the new shaders are employed. Despite producing more meshlets, the novel implementation is not significantly slower and is faster at processing individual meshlets compared to the naive approach. The novel Common Influences implementation spends between 15-22% less time processing each meshlet at run-time compared to the naive solution. Conclusions. Ultimately the unique capabilities of Mesh Shaders allow for potential performance increases to be had. The proposed novel Common Influences method shows promise due to it being faster on a per meshlet basis, but more work must be done in order to reduce the number of meshlets generated. The Mesh Shading pipeline is as of writing very new and there is a lot of potential for future work to further enhance and optimize the work presented in this thesis. More work must be done in order to make the meshlet generation more efficient so that the run-time workload is reduced as much as possible. / Bakgrund. I denna avhandling presenteras en ny metod för att deformera en modell med hjälp av den nya Mesh Shader funktionaliteten som är tillgänglig i Nvidias nya Turing arkitektur. Deformering av modeller utförs just nu oftast med så kallade Vertex eller Compute Shaders. Genom att nyttja styrkan hos den nya arkitekturen så kan det vara möjligt att ytterligare optimera deformeringsprocessen och på så sätt öka prestandan. Speciellt i samband där mer komplexa modeller används. Syfte. Syftet är att avgöra om den nya metoden är en lämplig ersättning av de nuvarande implementationerna. De viktigaste aspekterna som studeras är den totala GPU-exekveringstiden per bild som renderas av den nya metoden i förhållande till resterande, samt dess totala minnesanvändning. Metod. Utöver de befintliga implementeringarna, såsom Vertex Shader deformering och Compute Shader deformering, implementeras två nya metoder som använder Mesh Shaders. Den första implementeringen är en naiv metod som helt enkelt delar modellen i mindre delar, så kallade meshlets och deformerar varje meshlet i isolering. Den föreslagna nya common influences metoden tar i stället hänsyn till deformeringsdatan som tillhör modellen, såsom de gemensamma inverkningarna av varje vertex, vid generering av meshlets.  Avsikten är att producera meshlets där alla vertriser påverkas av samma leder i modellens skelett, vilket gör det möjligt att flytta informationen från en per vertris basis till en per meshlet basis. Detta tillåter att färre hämtningar sker på grafikkortet vid körning och vilket kan potentiellt ge bättre prestanda. Resultat. Resultaten indikerar att utnyttjandet av Mesh Shaders resulterar i ungefär samma prestanda jämfört med Vertex Shader deformering, (som observerades vara den snabbaste av de existerande implementationerna) samt att den orginella implementationen är marginellt långsammare på grund av ett högre antal meshlets genereras. Mesh Shading har potential till att bli snabbare om optimeringar somär unika till den nya arkitekturen används. Trots att man producerar fler meshlets,är den nya metoden inte markant långsammare och är snabbare med att bearbeta meshlets individuellt jämfört med den naiva implementationen. Den orginella implementationen spenderar mellan 15-22% mindre tid per meshlet vid körtid jämfört med den naiva lösningen. Slutsatser. I slutändan så erbjuder Mesh Shaders unika nya möjligheter till optimeringar som kan leda till potentiellt bättre prestanda. Den föreslagna nya Common Influences-metoden är lovande på grund av att den är snabbare per meshlet, men mer arbete måste utföras för att minska antalet genererade meshlets. Mash Shaders och Turing arkitekturen är vid skrivande stund fortfarande väldigt nya och det finns mycket potential för framtida arbeten att yterrligare förbättra och optimera det arbete som presenteras i denna avhandling. Mer arbete måste utföras för att göra meshletgenereringen effektivare så att arbetet som måste utföras under körtid minskas så mycket som möjligt.

Modern technology and computer science is spreading and developing very fast. The use and facilities evolve too. One of the fields where computer science is widely used – computer games. Computer animation makes games more interactive and attractive to the user. The purpose of this project was to review and analyze the animation techniques used in modern games development. Review file formats witch are used in computer games to store game objects and animation data. Try to point out the strengths and weaknesses of animation techniques. Main attention was committed to skeletal and key frame animation. Implement skeletal and key frame animation techniques.

Background. Skeletal animation is a technique used for displaying animated movement that uses bones in a hierarchy to get a structure; these bones are transformed based on their parent bones. Vertices in a mesh are connected to one or more bones with a weight, and the vertices will move based on the bone transformation, creating an animation. Objectives. In this study, a technique called "Particle-Oriented Bounding Box Skeletal Animation", (POBBSA) is proposed. Tests were conducted with the aim of comparing traditional skeletal animation and POBBSA based on performance and quality. With the primary aim of determining if the POBBSA technique is a solution for displaying suspended sediment-based characters. Methods. The two animation approaches were implemented with the intention to conduct performance tests based on memory usage and frames per second and quality tests based on feedback from a survey. The POBBSA will differ in its way of using oriented bounding boxes and particles with a certain style of movement. Results. The POBBSA approach needs more computational power to run than traditional skeletal animation, but its memory consumption can also be lower than traditional skeletal animation. The results from the survey were mostly positive, but artifacted particles appearing on the character were also mentioned by multiple survey participants. Conclusions. Performance-wise, the POBBSA is slower than traditional skeletal animation but has a slight advantage in memory usage. When comparing POBBSA and skeletal animation in terms of quality, it appears that for the current style, POBBSA works best for cuboid characters to avoid the artifacted particles that occur in complicated models.

What are some of the methods for rigging and animating a face in 3D and which method is preferable when and under which circumstances? In this report I will examine a few of the different methods available when rigging and animating a face in 3D. I will be working mainly with Autodesk 3D Studio Max so some knowledge with it is preferable to fully understand the process. At the end of the report I will look at the positive as well as negative aspects of each method as well as which method is preferable in what kind of production or with which assets.

The goal of this thesis is to create a graphics intro using the OpenGL library, where the maximal size of the executable is 64 kB. The program is written in C++ language and uses OpenGL version 4.6.

----- / As processor performance capabilities can only be increased through the useof a multicore architecture, software needs to be developed to utilize the parallelismoffered by the additional cores. Especially game developers need toseize this opportunity to save cycles and decrease the general rendering time.One of the existing advances towards this potential has been the creation ofmultithreaded game engines that take advantage of the additional processingunits. In such engines, different branches of the game loop are parallelized.However, the specifics of the parallel design patterns used are not outlined.Neither are any ideas of how to combine these patterns proposed. Thesemissing factors are addressed in this article, to provide a guideline for whento use which one of two parallel design patterns; fork-join and pipeline parallelism.Through a collection of data and a comparison using the metricsspeedup and efficiency, conclusions were derived that shed light on the waysin which a typical part of a game loop most efficiently can be organized forparallel execution through the use of different parallel design patterns. Thepipeline and fork-join patterns were applied respectively in a variety of testcases for two branches of a game loop: a BOIDS system and an animationsystem.

Animation of human walk is employed in many interactive applications, mostly in computer games. There are many ways to create such animation which differ in compromise among naturalness, control over animation and computing time. This work implements procedural animation which is applicable for walking on uneven terrain. Skeletal animation is used for manipulation with model of human body. Furthermore, inverse kinematics is described and implemented. That allows for adaptation to uneven terrain. It also describes phases of human walk, so we can accurately aproximate them. Proposed solution enables specification of walk using number of parameters and is able to adapt to surrounding terrain. The result should be usable in creation of computer games and should allow for creation of specific animation of human walk without need to create such animation manually.

Alors que le rendu réaliste gagne de l’ampleur dans l’industrie, les techniques à la fois photoréalistes et basées sur la physique, complexes en terme de temps de calcul, requièrent souvent une étape de précalcul hors-ligne. Les applications en temps réel, comme les jeux vidéo et la réalité virtuelle, se basent sur des techniques d’approximation et de précalcul pour atteindre des résultats réalistes. L’objectif de ce mémoire est l’investigation de différentes paramétrisations animées pour concevoir une technique d’approximation de rendu réaliste en temps réel. Notre investigation se concentre sur le rendu d’effets visuels appliqués à des personnages animés par modèle d’armature squelettique. Des paramétrisations combinant des données de mouvement et d’apparence nous permettent l’extraction de paramètres pour le processus en temps réel. Établir une dépendance linéaire entre le mouvement et l’apparence est ainsi au coeur de notre méthode. Nous nous concentrons sur l’occultation ambiante, où la simulation de l’occultation est causée par des objets à proximité bloquant la lumière environnante, jugée uniforme. L’occultation ambiante est une technique indépendante du point de vue, et elle est désormais essentielle pour le réalisme en temps réel. Nous examinons plusieurs paramétrisations qui traitent l’espace du maillage en fonction de l’information d’animation par squelette et/ou du maillage géométrique. Nous sommes capables d’approximer la réalité pour l’occultation ambiante avec une faible erreur. Notre technique pourrait également être étendue à d’autres effets visuels tels le rendu de la peau humaine (diffusion sous-surface), les changements de couleur dépendant du point de vue, les déformations musculaires, la fourrure ou encore les vêtements. / While realistic rendering gains more popularity in industry, photorealistic and physically- based techniques often necessitate offline processing due to their computational complexity. Real-time applications, such as video games and virtual reality, rely mostly on approximation and precomputation techniques to achieve realistic results. The objective of this thesis is to investigate different animated parameterizations in order to devise a technique that can approximate realistic rendering results in real time. Our investigation focuses on rendering visual effects applied to skinned skeletonbased characters. Combined parameterizations of motion and appearance data are used to extract parameters that can be used in a real-time approximation. Trying to establish a linear dependency between motion and appearance is the basis of our method. We focus on ambient occlusion, a simulation of shadowing caused by objects that block ambient light. Ambient occlusion is a view-independent technique important for realism. We consider different parameterization techniques that treat the mesh space depending on skeletal animation information and/or mesh geometry. We are able to approximate ground-truth ambient occlusion with low error. Our technique can also be extended to different visual effects, such as rendering human skin (subsurface scattering), changes in color due to the view orientation, deformation of muscles, fur, or clothes

The thesis is focused on the description of the basic principles of the virtual reality, on utilization of data gloves in the virtual reality and it implements the application with usage of the input device P5 glove. The implementation contains among the others various visual techniques of OpenGL and also shows up-to-date work with the popular physics engine Bullet Physics. The theoretical bases of these techniques are analysed in the thesis. So the output of the thesis will serve as a source of information to people interested in the knowledge of the data gloves problems and other similar peripherals, but also to interested people who want to learn more about the realization of the computer graphics and creation of physicist models.

This paper deals with studying skeletal animation techniques, and the subsequent design and implementation of skeletal animation extension for the GPUEngine library. The theoretical part describes the techniques of animation, skeletal animation and skinning. The following is an analysis of existing skeletal animation systems. The proposed solution seeks to reduce the data redundancy in the memory while rendering more skeletal models. According to the design a basic skeletal animation system has been implemented. Furthermore, a demonstration application has been created showing the skeletal system's use. The resulting skeletal system can be used in simple 3D applications and can serve as a basis for further works.