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Automatically Rigging Multi-Component Characters
Gaurav Bharaj, Thorsten Thormahlen, Hans-Peter Seidel, Christian Theobalt
Automatically creates skeletons, rigid skin weights, and joint mappings for multi-component 3D characters from shape databases.
Abstract
Rigging an arbitrary 3D character by creating an animation skeleton is a time‐consuming process even for experienced animators. In this paper, we present an algorithm that automatically creates animation rigs for multi‐component 3D models, as they are typically found in online shape databases. Our algorithm takes as input a multi‐component model and an input animation skeleton with associated motion data. It then creates a target skeleton for the input model, calculates the rigid skinning weights, and a mapping between the joints of the target skeleton and the input animation skeleton. The automatic approach does not need additional semantic information, such as component labels or user‐provided correspondences, and succeeds on a wide range of models where the number of components is significantly different. It implicitly handles large scale and proportional differences between input and target skeletons and can deal with certain morphological differences, e.g., if input and target have different numbers of limbs. The output of our algorithm can be directly used in a retargeting system to create a plausible animated character.
How to read this
- Category
- Method: an automatic rigging algorithm for multi-component characters
- Contributions
- Automatically builds a target animation skeleton for a multi-component model from an input skeleton plus motion data
- Computes rigid skinning weights and a joint mapping between target and input skeletons without component labels or user correspondences
- Handles large scale, proportional, and certain morphological differences (for example differing numbers of limbs) so output feeds directly into retargeting
- Context
- Builds on the auto-rigging line started by Baran and Popovic's Automatic Rigging and Animation of 3D Characters, extending it to disconnected multi-component models typical of online shape databases.Builds on: Automatic Rigging and Animation of 3D Characters
- Correctness
- Demonstrated on a range of database models with differing component counts; note that it produces rigid skinning weights (not smooth deformation) and assumes an input skeleton with motion is available, so quality of the final animation leans on the supplied skeleton and the retargeting stage.
- Clarity
- Reasonably accessible; a first pass conveys the pipeline (skeleton, weights, mapping), with a second pass needed for the correspondence and mapping details.
- How to read it
- First pass to grasp the three-stage pipeline; second pass on how correspondences and the joint mapping are inferred without semantic labels, the load-bearing part for handling morphological differences.
Builds on
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Related work
- Geodesic Voxel Binding for Production Character Meshes 2013 / SCA
- Sparse Rig Parameter Optimization for Character Animation 2017 / TOG
- Automatic Rigging and Animation of 3D Characters 2007 / SIGGRAPH
- MoRig: Motion-Aware Rigging of Character Meshes from Point Clouds 2022 / SIGGRAPH Asia
Keywords
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