On the real-time interactive motion transitions for an articulated body by the Uniform Posture Map

It is important to reuse existing motion capture data for reduction of the animation producing costs as well as the efficiency of the producing process. Because its motion curve has no control point, however, captured data is difficult to modify interactively. Motion transition is a useful method for reusing existing motion data. It generates a seamless intermediate motion with two short motion sequences. In this paper, the Uniform Posture Map (UPM) is proposed to perform motion transitions. The UPM is organized through the quantization of various postures with an unsupervised learning algorithm; it places the output neurons with similar postures in adjacent positions. Using this property, an intermediate posture of applied two postures is generated; the generating posture is used as a key-frame to make an interpolating motion. The UPM needs fewer computational costs, in comparison with other motion transition algorithms. It provides a control parameter; an animator can not only control the motion simply by adjusting this parameter but also produce animation interactively. The UPM prevents the generating of the invalid output neurons to present unreal postures in the learning phase; thus, it makes more realistic motion curves; finally it contributes to the making of more natural motions. The motion transition algorithm proposed in this paper can be applied to various fields such as real time 3D games virtual reality applications, and web 3D applications.