Abstract. This paper proposes a new user interface paradigm for motion capture based animation systems, providing intuitive and efficient ways to visualize the main motion capture concepts and operations. A prototype system was built, implementing the prop

Lately,however,severaltechniqueswereproposedtoprocesscaptureddata[9][11][12],providingtoolsformotionanalysis,modi cationandreuse.Thismakesmotionlibrariesmorevaluableforawideclassofanimators.

Mostofcurrentanimationsystemso erthepossibilityofusingmotioncaptureddatatogenerateanimations,butseveralsystemstreatthistechniqueasan“extratool”,orevenasasimpleplug-in.Therefore,ane ectivedescriptionofmotioncapturebasicconceptsisnotprovided.

Aninterestingandalternativeapproachwouldbetheconstructionofanani-mationsystemthatusesmotioncaptureasthekerneloftheentireanimationprocess.Thisleadstoanunlimitedrangeofpossibilitiestomanyanimators.Asanexample,thismotioncapturebasedsystemcouldbeintegratedwithhigh-endmotioncapturehardware,thuscreatingapowerfulenvironmentofmotionacquisitionandprocessing.

Inthiswork,weproposeanewuserinterfaceparadigmformotioncapturebasedanimationsystems,supportedbyanextensiblearchitecturethatincorporatesthe“stateofart”inmotioncaptureprocessingtechniques,andallowstheuseofstandardanimationmethods,suchaskeyframingorinversekinematics,aspowerfultoolstoimprovethesystem’s exibility.

Themaincontributionofthispaperistheintroductionofanelegantwaytodescribe,attheuserinterfacelevel,thebasicmotioncaptureabstractions.Wetreatcapturedmotionasapotentiallyreadyanimation,whichcanbemodi- edbyasetoftoolsembeddedinthearchitecture.Inthatway,aninterfacedescriptionofmotionoperationsandassociatedobjectsarede ned.

Aprototypesystemwasbuilt,implementingtheconceptsdescribedinthiswork.Thissystemwasusedtodemonstratethepotentialoftheproposedinterfaceparadigm.

Section2ofthispaperintroducesthebasicinternalstructuresoftheprototypesystem,togetherwithabriefdescriptionofitsarchitecture.Section3presentstheproposedinterfaceparadigmformotioncapturebasedsystems.Finally,conclusionsaregiveninsection4.

2System’sArchitectureandInternalStructures

Inthissection,wepresentaframeworkfortheanimationsystem.Also,abriefdescriptionofthearchitectureusedintheimplementedsystemisprovided.Thiswillgiveabetterunderstandingoftheapproachusedtobuildtheproposedinterfaceparadigm.