Where to Go Next

We are now going to develop a "sketch-based interface for polygonal modeling of stylized characters using an armature pipeline". Oh man, now doesn't that important?

This is the closest paper to my project:

Sketch-based Virtual Human Modelling and Animation
Chen Mao, Sheng Feng Qin, and David Wright

However, I have decided to use an armature-based approach akin to real sculpting technique.

The overall contour of the human body is defined by two types of bones: long bones (eg - limb bones, spine, the femur, the radius, etc.) and flat bones (eg - protective bones, skull, pelvis, etc.). Using a 2D sketching interface, the artist draws an armature, using lines ending in circles for long bones and circles and cubes for flat bones.

The long bones are then converted into a Maya skeleton. The flat bones are converted into I-forgot-what-they-are-called-but-they-are-like-deformers-but-rather-keep-things-from-deforming. The bones are then used to automatically generate a mesh - for example, the circle defining the ribcage will result in the chest mesh being roughly the same shape.

Based on the resulting skeleton, the plug-in adds curve pairs (tetraCurves from the previous blog entries) which give artists recursive control over figure obesity and fitness. Artists can alter the entire figure or selected body parts.

The plug-in will also automatically pelt map (or Ptex) the model for easy texturing. It comes with a skin shader, too.

The good part about this is that it allows the artist to create non-standard figures. I was thinking for another project even animating them procedurally.

These are papers I will use to help me. This list is not filled yet.:

Sketching Interfaces:

Amit Shesh and Baoquan Chen
SMARTPAPER: An Interactive and User Friendly
Sketching System

Automatic Meshing:

Rigging:

Jianhui Zhao1, Ling Li, and Kwoh Chee Keong
3D Posture Reconstruction and Human Animation from 2D Feature Points

Andrei Sharf, Thomas Lewiner, Ariel Shamir, and Leif Kobbelt
On-the-fly Curve-skeleton Computation for 3D Shapes

Curve Manipulation:

Pelt Mapping:

Texturing and Shading:


This is related to stuff I probably won't implement but would be cool additions.

Clothing:

Philippe Decaudin, Dan Julius, Jamie Wither, Laurence Boissieux, Alla Sheffer, Marie-Paule Cani1,2,3
Virtual Garments: A Fully Geometric Approach for Clothing Design

Ambition will get the better of me.