Body Scanning for Avatar Production and Animation

Brownridge, A and Twigg, PM (2014) Body Scanning for Avatar Production and Animation. International Journal of Fashion Design, Technology and Education, 7.

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Abstract

Work presented in this report describes a workflow developed to produce and animate a realistic virtual human for animation. Production of the avatar makes use of infrared depth sensing technology to produce a representative avatar of a scanned subject. The potential is that this could be used to contribute to a virtual fashion show or for motion analysis purposes. Several methods of constructing a clean polygonal character mesh from the scan data are trialled and discussed. The preparation of the resulting character mesh for animation involves rigging techniques used within three-dimensional (3D) animation and are optimised using scripts developed for this specific task. The report investigates how extracted measurement data can be used to place joints as a starting point for the rigging process. Pre-recorded motion capture data are successfully used to animate a representative avatar of a human subject in a realistic and natural way within a virtual 3D environment.