Automatic Generation of Skeleton Animation from 3D Human Mesh Model

The process of making skeleton for character animation is a long-winded task requiring manual tweaking. This paper presents a novel method to generate an automatic robust animated skeleton from 3D human geometric model. First, our method contracts the mesh by applying Laplacian-based mesh contractions with constraints. The mesh contraction process preserves the original topology and connectivity of the mesh model. The 1D curve-skeleton is extracted from contracted mesh by applying edge contraction. Second, an automatic hierarchical joint-based skeleton (armature) has been generated, using the refined extracted curve-skeleton obtained from input mesh. Third, 3D motion data of joints are retargeted on generated skeleton through joint mapping to evaluate the accuracy of the skeleton animation. The significance of our approach is to minimize the labor-intensive process of skeleton adjustments for character animation. An automatic generated skeleton can be directly used to mesh rigging, mesh skinning and retargeting to create satisfactory character animation. Finally, experiments have been carried out to generate a plausible skeleton from mesh and create animation of that skeleton.