The goal of this reading is to get you to know about some of the basic techniques used in computer animation. There are a smattering of things – some overlap with what you (would/should have) learned in a graphics class, and others build on that. It’s stuff that either it’s hard to identify where it first came from (in a research paper), or the old papers are not worth trying to read (since they are so dated and hard to learn from).
Rick Parent’s textbook is a good source for this kind of stuff. (as discussed here).
To start with, I’d like you to read:
As you read through this, the important thing is to get the general gist of the methods, not necessarily the details.
For example:
- You should understand the basic idea of arc-length parameterization, but you don’t necessarily need to get all the details of the integration schemes. (just be aware of them, should you need them later)
- We’ll spend time (probably later this week) on rotations, so don’t expect to understand the details of interpolating rotations (especially since quaternions are introduced in Chapter 2 of the book, which I did not provide you with). But hopefully, this reading will help you appreciate the problems.
But, you should certainly have a catalog of basic ideas in your head – with a knowledge of where to go to look up the details.
There is a Moodle forum that will have a question for you to answer. The writing is due by 9am Wednesday, February 6th (so I have a chance to look at it before class).
Lectures Monday and Wednesday will cover this material. If all goes according to plan, Monday will set up a lot of the basics so that you can read about the details after hearing the basics in class.
