Planning Notes II

I realized my blogs are very much not "weekly." I just kind of post whenever I've finished something.

Here are some more moderately intelligible notes. They describe in detail the class structure of the plug-in - like what node possesses what and which methods call which inside each other.


I have to work on the soft selection and mesh manipulation algorithm, but after that, I'll be ready to put it all to computer (given that I have, already put it all to paper).

Here are the tasks I am giving myself, about one or two a week:

1. Do the plug-in writing exercise from my Maya plug-in writing class.
2. Create a functional CurvePair.
3. Make a TetraCurve where muscle curves affect fat curves.
   
4. Make the TetraCurve manipulate the mesh.
5. Model the figure. Going to start off with just the human male for now, since it's from the Goldfinger book.
6. Set TetraCurves up on the figure.
7. Create GUI.
8. Allow for importing and exporting of skeletons and meshes.

These are things I would like to add if I have the time.

1. Save and load from text files.
2. Gender toggles.
3. Viewer toggles (such as "hide curves").

Well, then. To work.

Research Update

I've been doing more research for another class I'm in, and it's turned up more interesting papers. These - especially those on modeling humans - have been much more relevant.

I'm not listing the papers I mentioned in the other post, but I'm still sorting the papers by topic.

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Modeling Humans

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(From Range Scans)
Exploring the space of human body shapes: data-driven synthesis under anthropometric control
Brett Allen, Brian Curless, Zoran Popovic
University of Washington

(From Range Scans)
Allen, B., Curless, B., and Popovic, Z. 2003.
The space of human body shapes: reconstruction and parameterization from range scans.
ACM Trans. Graph. 22, 3 (Jul. 2003), 587-594. DOI= http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/882262.882311

(Volumetric Techniques)
Analysis of Human Shape Variation Using Volumetric Techniques
ZB Azouz, M Rioux, C Shu, R Lepage

(Head Modeling with Landmarks)
Head shop: Generating animated head models with anatomical structure
psu.edu [PDF]
K Kahler, J Haber, H Yamauchi, HP Seidel - 2002

(From 3D Scan Data with Templates)
Animatable Human Body Model Reconstruction
from 3D Scan Data using Templates

(From sizing parameters)
Seo, H. and Magnenat-Thalmann, N. 2003.
An automatic modeling of human bodies from sizing parameters. In Proceedings of the 2003 Symposium on interactive 3D Graphics (Monterey, California, April 27 - 30, 2003).
I3D '03. ACM, New York, NY, 19-26. DOI= http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/641480.641487

(Sweep-based)
Dae-Eun Hyun, Seung-Hyun Yoon, Jung-Woo Chang, Joon-Kyung Seong, Myung-Soo Kim and Bert Jüttler
Sweep-based human deformation

(Anatomy-based)
Scheepers, F., Parent, R. E., Carlson, W. E., and May, S. F. 1997. Anatomy-based modeling of the human musculature. In Proceedings of the 24th Annual Conference on Computer Graphics and interactive Techniques International Conference on Computer Graphics and Interactive Techniques. ACM Press/Addison-Wesley Publishing Co., New York, NY, 163-172.

(Morphable Faces)
Blanz, V. and Vetter, T. 1999.
A morphable model for the synthesis of 3D faces.
In Proceedings of the 26th Annual Conference on Computer Graphics and interactive Techniques International Conference on Computer Graphics and Interactive Techniques. ACM Press/Addison-Wesley Publishing Co., New York, NY, 187-194.

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Differentiating Crowds

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(Saliency-based Variation)
Eye-catching Crowds: Saliency based Selective Variation
Rachel McDonnell, Michéal Larkin, Benjamín Hernández, Isaac Rudomin, Carol O'Sullivan

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Animating Figures in Crowds

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(Perception of Motion)
Perception of Human Motion with Dierent Geometric Models
Jessica K. Hodgins, James F. O'Brien, Jack Tumbliny

(Sex Perception in Motion)
McDonnell, R., Jörg, S., Hodgins, J. K., Newell, F., and O'Sullivan, C. 2007.
Virtual shapers & movers: form and motion affect sex perception.
In Proceedings of the 4th Symposium on Applied Perception in Graphics and Visualization (Tubingen, Germany, July 25 - 27, 2007). APGV '07, vol. 253. ACM, New York, NY, 7-10. DOI= http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/1272582.1272584

(Automatic Rigging)
Automatic Rigging and Animation of 3D Characters
Ilya Baran, Jovan Popovic

(Physics-Based Walking)
SIMBICON: Simple Biped Locomotion Control
Kangkang Yin, Kevin Loken, Michiel van de Panne

(Skin and Muscle Deformation)
Data-driven Modeling Skin and Muscle Deformation
Sang Il Park, Jessica Hodgins

(Joint-Aware Deformation)
Joint-aware Manipulation of Deformable Models
Weiwei Xu, Jun Wang, KangKang Yin, Kun Zhou, Michiel van de Panne, Falai Chen, Baining Guo

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Rendering Crowds

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(LOD Comparative Study)
LOD Human Representations: A Comparative Study
Rachel McDonnell, Simon Dobbyn, Carol O’Sullivan

(Vein Textures)
Runions, A., Fuhrer, M., Lane, B., Federl, P., Rolland-Lagan, A., and Prusinkiewicz, P. 2005. Modeling and visualization of leaf venation patterns. ACM Trans. Graph. 24, 3 (Jul. 2005), 702-711.

(Skin Reflectance)
Analysis of Human Faces using a Measurement-Based Skin Reflectance Model
Tim Weyrich, Wojciech Matusik, Hanspeter Pfister, Bernd Bickel, Craig Donner, Chien Tu, Janet McAndless, Jinho Lee, Addy Ngan, Henrik Wann Jansen, Markus Gross

(Subsurface Scattering)
An Empirical BSSRDF Model
Craig Donner, Jason Lawrence, Ravi Ramamoorthi, Toshiya Hachisuka, Henrik Wann Jensen, Shree Nayar

(Rendering)
Drawing a Crowd
David R. Gosselin, Pedro V. Sander, and Jason L. Mitchel

(Face Cloning)
Hyneman, W., Itokazu, H., Williams, L., and Zhao, X. 2005. Human face project. In ACM SIGGRAPH 2005 Courses (Los Angeles, California, July 31 - August 04, 2005). J. Fujii, Ed. SIGGRAPH '05. ACM, New York, NY, 5.

(Skin Texture)
Multispectral Skin Color Modeling
Elli Angelopoulou, Rana Molana, Kostas Daniilidis

(Skin Texture)
Skin Texture Modeling
OANA G. CULA AND KRISTIN J. DANA

(Skin Texture)
The secret of velvety skin
Jan Koenderink, Sylvia Pont

(Skin Texture)
KRISHNASWAMY, A., AND BARANOSKI, G. 2004. A
biophysically-based spectral model of light interaction with human
skin. Computer Graphics Forum 23, 3 (Sept.), 331–340.

(Face Cloning)
Realistic Human Face Rendering for “The Matrix Reloaded”
George Borshukov and J.P.Lewis

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Props and Clothing

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(Clothes)
Frederic Cordier, Hyewon Seo, Nadia Magnenat-Thalmann,
"Made-to-Measure Technologies for an Online Clothing Store,"
IEEE Computer Graphics and Applications, vol. 23, no. 1, pp. 38-48, Jan./Feb. 2003, doi:10.1109/MCG.2003.1159612

(Clothes)
Clothing the Masses: Real-Time Clothed Crowds With Variation
S. Dobbyn, R. McDonnell, L. Kavan, S. Collins and C. O’Sullivan
Interaction, Simulation and Graphics Lab, Trinity College Dublin, Ireland

(LOD Evaluation for Clothes Perception)
McDonnell, R., Dobbyn, S., Collins, S., and O'Sullivan, C. 2006.
Perceptual evaluation of LOD clothing for virtual humans.
In Proceedings of the 2006 ACM Siggraph/Eurographics Symposium on Computer Animation (Vienna, Austria, September 02 - 04, 2006).
Symposium on Computer Animation. Eurographics Association, Aire-la-Ville, Switzerland, 117-126.

Planning Notes

I've read a lot more than I've needed to, I think, but it's given me a better grasp on currently available technology for human modeling: volumetric methods, template methods. Hyewon Seo, et al. even did "An Automatic Modeling of Human Bodies from Sizing Parameters" for a clothing story.

Most use CESAR data, so I've decided to take my project down a slightly different path. The thing is, CESAR scan data produces ridiculously high resolution models. More importantly, the resulting figures cannot be easily stylized (pushed beyond the available data set). My editable curves methods aims to allow artists to create stylized models, to fit provided skeletons, and accomodate lower resolutions.

These are my planning notes. They are relatively intelligible planning notes. The next step is to get them off the paper and into the proposal.

Sorry, 3DS Max users, but I've settled on writing on Maya plug-in. The GUI (and as much as possible) will be done with Maya's Python Commands. However, the data structures (such as bodyPart and triCurve) will be written in C++.

I have also broken down the figure into seventeen overlapping regions and demarcated important landmarks - specifically using terms from figure drawing classes.

Research Update

My research so far hasn't turned up what I'm looking for. I need to find more (or, perhaps, it doesn't exist).

Currently, the paper on ontology of humans paper has offered the best in terms of modeling, but most of it has been done using body scans and interpolating between that data, which doesn't allow for stylization. As for rigging, landmarks are then found in a double-pass, and a skeleton built from that landmark. They use H-ANIM skeletons. They also reference accessories which I am interested in (if not necessarily implementing). I think this is a good paper to consider when I design what my artistic models need.

O'Sullivan's work gives good reason for why my project would be needed: people distinguish using appearance. But it doesn't offer insight into what has been done in similar veins. Her motion research is a little outside of my scope, though. The only thing that concerns me is that the work proved pretty solidly that color is the distinguishing factor for clone recognition, so I don't know how much I should do with that. Luckily, she references a paper which she used to create a procedural texture for her human models. I need to find it. While this isn't within the scope of my senior design project, it could become the project for another class and be merged into my senior design.

I'm going to keep looking at papers, but I need to concentrate now on building the framework for my program. So, top priority is going to be writing a simple, "Hello World" Maya plug-in to familiarize myself with the API. Then, I'm going to post a thorough design for my plug-in.