In interactive computer games and computer animation, intuitively controlling the motion of an articulated character is considered as a difficult task. One of the reasons is that, typically, an articulated model used in the field has a high degree-of-freedom (DOF) for joints so that it is challenging to devise an easy-to-use interface to control the individual DOF.

In our haptic puppetry system, as an alternative to existing techniques for controlling articulated characters, we propose the traditional marionette control as natural interfaces to control the characters, and explain
how to implement a virtual marionette based on physically-based modelling and haptic paradigm. Using our virtual marionette system, we can rapidly but easily create sophisticated motions for a high-DOF articulated character. Moreover, our system relies on haptic interfaces to model the behavior of real-world marionette
controls and provides to the puppeteer responsive forces as a result of the created motions. This results in the puppeteer having a better sense of control over the marionette that she or he manipulates. Our experimentations show that our system can create reasonably complicated motions for articulated characters
in an easy and quick manner at highly interactive rates.

pdf (6.4MBytes)

The virtual marionette is standing up from a chair, and kicking and chasing a ball.

Copyright 2006 Computer Graphics Laboratory

Dept of Computer Science & Engineering

Ewha Womans University, Seoul, Korea

Last update: March 7, 2006

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