Patent
1992-03-30
1997-11-25
Beausoliel, Jr., Robert W.
G06T 1300
Patent
active
056921179
DESCRIPTION:
BRIEF SUMMARY
FIELD OF THE INVENTION
This invention relates to apparatus for, and a method of, producing a sequence of images defining an animated sequence, such as a cartoon.
DESCRIPTION OF THE BACKGROUND ART
Traditionally, cartoons are manually drawn as a sequence of frames which, when played in succession at relatively high speed, form a moving picture (typical frame rates are 24, 25 or 30 frames per second, although sometimes frames are repeated twice). Even for a short sequence, many thousands of frames thus need to be drawn by hand and production of the hand drawn frames requires large teams of skilled animators and assistance. Almost all cartoon animation today is still produced in this way.
Some essential steps in production of cartoon animations are: significant points throughout the sequence; the missing intermediate frames by a process of interpolating by eye between adjacent key frames, and then frames are recorded on film or video tape and then replayed to check for other errors. If necessary, frames are redrawn at this point; otherwise, the pencil drawings are then transferred to clear cel, inked in, painted in the required colours, placed on the required background, and recorded on film or video.
In view of the sheer volume of drawings required, and of the time and expense involved in producing cartoons by this method, some attempts have been made to automate parts of the process. Inking and colouring has successfully been automated, resulting in some savings in manpower and time.
It has also previously been proposed to automate the interpolation or "in betweening" stage. In such proposals, the key frames produced by the senior animator are scanned in some manner by input means into an image processor such as a programmed computer, where an internal representation of each is stored. Corresponding points or lines, or other parts of two key frames, are identified manually and in between images are generated by producing a sequence of frames in each of which a similar set of points, lines or parts are generated by interpolation between those of two adjacent stored key frames. The remainder of the frame between the identified points or parts is then generated.
Such proposals have been uniformally unsuccessful, however, because the problem of identifying corresponding parts in two key frames derived from the original picture material is extremely difficult. Two key frames drawn by the same artist may appear similar to the human eye, but every point of the two line drawings may be different and the image processing apparatus is unable to distinguish between differences which correspond to motion or intentional change, and are hence to be interpolated, and those which are merely accidental.
One prior proposal for character animation is described in "3-D character animation on the symbolics system", by P. Bergeron, issued as Course Notes on the Course "3D Character Animation by Computer" at the Siggraph '87 Conference in 1987.
This publication describes the use of a three dimensional modelling program (S-geometry) and an animation (in the broad sense of the word) program (S-dynamics) to animate cartoon characters. Each character is modelled as a spline surface defined by a mesh of control points. The article proposes to create a plurality of "expressions" corresponding to different pictures, each of which is derived from a "source" expression. The "expressions" are created by performing a transformation upon a plurality of the control points of the mesh of the "source" expression, using the S-geometry program.
After creating the expressions, the separate S-dynamics program is used to produce a sequence of pictures. A bar chart illustrating the value of a control variable as the height of bars along a timeline is interactively manipulated by a position sensitive input device (a mouse) to create or modify the different pictures of the sequence. The control variable may dictate the amount of a given transformation operation to be applied (such as rotation), or may give a percentage of one of the predetermined ex
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Berend Andrew Louis Charles
Brocklehurst Michael John
Hawkins Stuart Philip
Jones Gavin Timothy
Williams Mark Jonathan
Beausoliel, Jr. Robert W.
Cambridge Animation Systems Limited
Elmore Stephen
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