Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'Direct animation'

This thesis interrogates the ways in which the body-centred practices of women film artists embrace the materiality of direct animation in order to foreground gendered, subjective positions. Through the researcher's own creative practice, it investigates how this mode of film-making, in which the artist works through physical engagement with the film materials and the material processes of film-making, might be understood as feminine and/or feminist. Direct animation foregrounds touch as the primary sense. Its practices are process-based and highly experimental, because images are made through the agency of the body operating within restrictive parameters, making results difficult to predict or control with precision. For these reasons, direct animation has not been embraced by mainstream, narrative-focused, studio-based models of production, unlike other forms of two and three dimensional animation. It has remained a specialist area for the individual artist and auteur, and, to date, there is a paucity of commentary about direct animation practices, and what exists has been dominated by male voices. In order to develop ideas about the ways in which women represent themselves in an expanded film-making praxis that is focused on the body and materiality of process, this PhD inquiry, encompassing a body of films with written contextualisation, is situated in the context of the direct animation practices of three artists (Caroline Leaf, Annabel Nicolson, and Margaret Tait); and informed by conceptual frameworks provided by Luce Irigaray, Julia Kristeva and Hélène Cixous. This thesis proposes, via interaction between these three axes of research, that women film artists, operating independently, are able to create a female imaginary that represents women and is recognised by them, by constructing positions of practice outside the dominant symbolic modes of patriarchy, which evolve through the maternal body and the materialities of the feminine.

INTRODUCTION With the advent of Web 2.0, social networking websites like Facebook, MySpace and LinkedIn have become hugely popular. According to (Nilsen, 2009), social networking websites have global1 figures of almost 250 millions unique users among the top five2, with the time people spend on those networks increasing 63% between 2007 and 2008. Facebook alone saw a massive growth of 566% in number of minutes in the same period of time. Furthermore their appeal is clear, they enable users to easily form persistent networks of friends with whom they can interact and share content. Users then use those networks to keep in touch with their current friends and to reconnect with old friends. However, online social network services have rapidly evolved into highly complex systems which contain a large amount of personally salient information derived from large networks of friends. Since that information varies from simple links to music, photos and videos, users not only have to deal with the huge amount of data generated by them and their friends but also with the fact that it‟s composed of many different media forms. Users are presented with increasing challenges, especially as the number of friends on Facebook rises. An example of a problem is when a user performs a simple task like finding a specific friend in a group of 100 or more friends. In that case he would most likely have to go through several pages and make several clicks till he finds the one he is looking for. Another example is a user with more than 100 friends in which his friends make a status update or another action per day, resulting in 10 updates per hour to keep up. That is plausible, especially since the change in direction of Facebook to rival with Twitter, by encouraging users to update their status as they do on Twitter. As a result, to better present the web of information connected to a user the use of better visualizations is essential. The visualizations used nowadays on social networking sites haven‟t gone through major changes during their lifetimes. They have added more functionality and gave more tools to their users, but still the core of their visualization hasn‟t changed. The information is still presented in a flat way in lists/groups of text and images which can‟t show the extra connections pieces of information. Those extra connections can give new meaning and insights to the user, allowing him to more easily see if that content is important to him and the information related to it. However showing extra connections of information but still allowing the user to easily navigate through it and get the needed information with a quick glance is difficult. The use of color coding, clusters and shapes becomes then essential to attain that objective. But taking into consideration the advances in computer hardware in the last decade and the software platforms available today, there is the opportunity to take advantage of 3D. That opportunity comes in because we are at a phase were the hardware and the software available is ready for the use of 3D in the web. With the use of the extra dimension brought by 3D, visualizations can be constructed to show the content and its related information to the user at the same screen and in a clear way. Also it would allow a great deal of interactivity. Another opportunity to create better information‟s visualization presents itself in the form of the open APIs, specifically the ones made available by the social networking sites. Those APIs allow any developers to create their own applications or sites taking advantage of the huge amount of information there is on those networks. Specifically to this case, they open the door for the creation of new social network visualizations. Nevertheless, the third dimension is by itself not enough to create a better interface for a social networking website, there are some challenges to overcome. One of those challenges is to make the user understand what the system is doing during the interaction with the user. Even though that is important in 2D visualizations, it becomes essential in 3D due to the extra dimension. To overcome that challenge it‟s necessary the use of the principles of animations defined by the artists at Walt Disney Studios (Johnston, et al., 1995). By applying those principles in the development of the interface, the actions of the system in response to the user inputs became clear and understandable. Furthermore, a user study needs to be performed so the users‟ main goals and motivations, while navigating the social network, are revealed. Their goals and motivations are important in the construction of an interface that reflects the user expectations for the interface, but also helps in the development of appropriate metaphors. Those metaphors have an important role in the interface, because if correctly chosen they help the user understand the elements of the interface instead of making him memorize it. The last challenge is the use of 3D visualization on the web, since there have been several attempts to bring 3D into it, mainly with the various versions of VRML which were destined to failure due to the hardware limitations at the time. However, in the last couple of years there has been a movement to make the necessary tools to finally allow developers to use 3D in a useful way, using X3D or OpenGL but especially flash. This thesis argues that there is a need for a better social network visualization that shows all the dimensions of the information connected to the user and that allows him to move through it. But there are several characteristics the new visualization has to possess in order for it to present a real gain in usability to Facebook‟s users. The first quality is to have the friends at the core of its design, and the second to make use of the metaphor of circles of friends to separate users in groups taking into consideration the order of friendship. To achieve that several methods have to be used, from the use of 3D to get an extra dimension for presenting relevant information, to the use of direct manipulation to make the interface comprehensible, predictable and controllable. Moreover animation has to be use to make all the action on the screen perceptible to the user. Additionally, with the opportunity given by the 3D enabled hardware, the flash platform, through the use of the flash engine Papervision3D and the Facebook platform, all is in place to make the visualization possible. But even though it‟s all in place, there are challenges to overcome like making the system actions in 3D understandable to the user and creating correct metaphors that would allow the user to understand the information and options available to him. This thesis document is divided in six chapters, with Chapter 2 reviewing the literature relevant to the work described in this thesis. In Chapter 3 the design stage that resulted in the application presented in this thesis is described. In Chapter 4, the development stage, describing the architecture and the components that compose the application. In Chapter 5 the usability test process is explained and the results obtained through it are presented and analyzed. To finish, Chapter 6 presents the conclusions that were arrived in this thesis.
Orientador: Ian Oakley

This paper explores the presentation of family in the controversial FOX Network television program Family Guy. Polarizing to audiences, the Griffin family of Family Guy is at once considered sophomoric and offensive to some and smart and satiric to others. Though neither judgment of the show is necessarily mutually exclusive, the intention of this study is to reconcile those disparate viewpoints in order to measure the show's purposefulness. After all, if Family Guy succeeds in its satire, it is full of social purpose, offensiveness notwithstanding. This thesis focuses on arguably the main point of contention in Family Guy: the family. Those critical of the show denounce the Griffins for their less-than-exemplary behavior. Proponents of the show—while not exactly disagreeing with that perception of the Griffins—differ in their approach, as they consider the Griffins satiric characters meant to be models of misbehavior. Reformative in nature, satire attacks vice and folly directly and indirectly, and it is in its combined use of direct and indirect satire that Family Guy, at times, misses the mark. By directly satirizing other families in its trademark cutaway transitions, Family Guy places its own family, the Griffins, in a position of superiority, which complicates matters when the Griffins indirectly become objects of satire. Especially regarding the relationship between Griffin family patriarch Peter and his daughter Meg, Family Guy oftentimes presents an imbalanced “satire” that would best be described as “abuse.”

This thesis describes methods for applying secondary water effects as spray, foam, splashes and mist to a fluid simulation system. For an art direction control over the base fluid flow a Fluid Implicit Particle solver with custom fields is also presented. The methods build upon production techniques within the visual effects industry, fluid dynamics and relevant computer graphics research. The implementation of the methods is created within Side Effects Software Houdini.

The visualization of networks as graphs composed of nodes and vertices benefits many fields of science including social network analysis. The use case of visualizations is twofold. Firstly, easy initial visualization of networks will help researchers find and specify their hypotheses before having to do any technical analysis. Secondly, once hypotheses are con confirmed, visualizations can be used to support these findings, making it possible to explain them to a broad audience. This thesis will expand upon the tools currently available for visualizing undirected graphs in two ways. Modern force-directed graph drawing algorithms are adjusted in order to approximate visualizing graphs' edges' weights as their respective lengths. A number of adjustments of Yifan Hu's spring-electrical force-directed graph drawing algorithm are compared and evaluated. Even though this is an NP-hard problem, results show that simple adjustments can improve a layout's edges' weight-length (ewl) relationship significantly. In order to evaluate whether graph's ewl scores improve from running the weight-adjusted Yifan Hu algorithm, a novel method is introduced. A number of experiments are conducted to investigate the effects of degree and variety of edge weights on a graph's ewl score. The second contribution concerns the design and implementation of functions aimed at visualizing the transitions between different timepoints of the same graph. Different approaches to ensure insightful animation of dynamic graphs are discussed and a method for the animation of dynamic graphs is implemented. Finally, both contributions are combined and applied to a real-world offline dynamic graph, resulting in visualisation of the co-occurrence of popular Twitter hashtags during the COVID-19 pandemic in Sweden. This application will visually highlight the contributions' strengths and weaknesses.

Visualization of volumetric data has always been useful in big va- riety of ways, for example computer tomography (CT) and magnet resonance tomography (MRT) are two major applications of this sorts of algorithms. Since volumetric data has no limitation regarding the shape of the object that ordinary mesh algorithms has we can fully reconstruct anything using the Marching cubes algorithm. New tech- niques allow us to implement this algorithm by new and exible means. Here we will use the latest of DirectX technology to run marching cubes in realtime using compute shaders.
kristoffer.swe@gmail.com

NOGUEIRA, Yuri Lenon Barbosa. Um modelo de sistema nervoso para o problema do controle de animação por dinâmica direta. 2007. 70 f. Dissertação (Mestrado em ciência da computação)- Universidade Federal do Ceará, Fortaleza-CE, 2007.
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Direct dynamics animation consists of synthesizing the movements of a model from the specification of its physical properties (mass and moment of inertia), the conditions of bond between its contracting parties, the conditions of contact with other bodies and the forces that acts on it. This approaching has the advantage to generate animations with physical realism. The problem, that continues relevant as inquiry object, is the control of the model: “What forces must be applied to the model to generate the desired movement?”. The solution of the problem, presented in this work, assumes that the studied model consists of a structure of rigid link bodies whose movements are generated by internal actuators, with its forces defined by a nervous system. With use of artificial neural networks and evolutionary computation, the proposed controller is capable of adapting itself to control different articulated models, and to generate varied types of movements while it keeps the stability even with small variations of the terrain. The presented model possesses, in its core, a Central Pattern Generator (CPG) based on neural oscillators, that has their activities regulated by the sensorial module, to allow the balance of the structure and stability of the movement, responding to environment variations. For the adaptation to the articulated structure and learning of movements, the controller has a cognitive module, responsible for the search of neural parameters, through genetic algorithms, and the feedback networks (sensorial answers to environment variations), with genetic programming. Results are presented related to the control of models humanoid, cheetah, frog, luxo and luxo-2, having these last two ones equal topologies, but with variations in the sizes of the bodies and freedom of the joints. All the models are tested in plain land and with slope.
A animaçãao por dinâmica direta consiste em sintetizar os movimentos de um modelo a partir da especificação de suas propriedades físicas (massa e momento de inércia), das condições de vínculo entre suas partes componentes, das condições de contato com outros corpos e das forças que nele atuam. Essa abordagem tem a vantagem de gerar animações com realismo físico. O problema, que continua relevante como objeto de investigação, é o de controle do modelo: “Que forças devem ser aplicadas ao modelo para gerar o movimento desejado?”. A solução do problema proposto apresentada neste trabalho assume que o modelo estudado constitui-se de uma estrutura de corpos rígidos articulados cujos movimentos são gerados por atuadores internos, com suas forças definidas por um sistema nervoso. Com o uso de redes neurais artificiais e computação evolucionária, o controlador proposto é capaz de adaptar-se para controlar diferentes modelos articulados, e para gerar variados tipos de movimentos enquanto mantém a estabilidade mesmo quando há pequenas variações do terreno. O modelo proposto possui, em seu núcleo, um gerador central de padrões (CPG - Central Pattern Generator) baseado em osciladores neurais, e o mesmo tem sua atividade regulada por módulos sensoriais, para permitir o equilíbrio da estrutura e estabilidade do movimento, respondendo àss variações do ambiente. Para a adaptação à estrutura articulada e aprendizagem de movimentos, o controlador possui ainda um módulo cognitivo, responsável pela busca dos parâmetros neurais, através de algoritmos genéticos, e das redes de retroalimentação (sensoriamento), com programação genética. Resultados são apresentados em associação ao controle dos modelos humanóide, cheetah, sapo, luxo e luxo-2, sendo esses dois últimos iguais topologicamente, mas com variações nos tamanhos dos corpos e liberdade das juntas. Todos os modelos são testados em terreno plano e com rampa.

CoordenaÃÃo de AperfeiÃoamento de NÃvel Superior
A animaÃÃao por dinÃmica direta consiste em sintetizar os movimentos de um modelo a partir da especificaÃÃo de suas propriedades fÃsicas (massa e momento de inÃrcia), das condiÃÃes de vÃnculo entre suas partes componentes, das condiÃÃes de contato com outros corpos e das forÃas que nele atuam. Essa abordagem tem a vantagem de gerar animaÃÃes com realismo fÃsico. O problema, que continua relevante como objeto de investigaÃÃo, à o de controle do modelo: âQue forÃas devem ser aplicadas ao modelo para gerar o movimento desejado?â. A soluÃÃo do problema proposto apresentada neste trabalho assume que o modelo estudado constitui-se de uma estrutura de corpos rÃgidos articulados cujos movimentos sÃo gerados por atuadores internos, com suas forÃas definidas por um sistema nervoso. Com o uso de redes neurais artificiais e computaÃÃo evolucionÃria, o controlador proposto à capaz de adaptar-se para controlar diferentes modelos articulados, e para gerar variados tipos de movimentos enquanto mantÃm a estabilidade mesmo quando hà pequenas variaÃÃes do terreno. O modelo proposto possui, em seu nÃcleo, um gerador central de padrÃes (CPG - Central Pattern Generator) baseado em osciladores neurais, e o mesmo tem sua atividade regulada por mÃdulos sensoriais, para permitir o equilÃbrio da estrutura e estabilidade do movimento, respondendo Ãss variaÃÃes do ambiente. Para a adaptaÃÃo à estrutura articulada e aprendizagem de movimentos, o controlador possui ainda um mÃdulo cognitivo, responsÃvel pela busca dos parÃmetros neurais, atravÃs de algoritmos genÃticos, e das redes de retroalimentaÃÃo (sensoriamento), com programaÃÃo genÃtica. Resultados sÃo apresentados em associaÃÃo ao controle dos modelos humanÃide, cheetah, sapo, luxo e luxo-2, sendo esses dois Ãltimos iguais topologicamente, mas com variaÃÃes nos tamanhos dos corpos e liberdade das juntas. Todos os modelos sÃo testados em terreno plano e com rampa.
Direct dynamics animation consists of synthesizing the movements of a model from the specification of its physical properties (mass and moment of inertia), the conditions of bond between its contracting parties, the conditions of contact with other bodies and the forces that acts on it. This approaching has the advantage to generate animations with physical realism. The problem, that continues relevant as inquiry object, is the control of the model: âWhat forces must be applied to the model to generate the desired movement?â. The solution of the problem, presented in this work, assumes that the studied model consists of a structure of rigid link bodies whose movements are generated by internal actuators, with its forces defined by a nervous system. With use of artificial neural networks and evolutionary computation, the proposed controller is capable of adapting itself to control different articulated models, and to generate varied types of movements while it keeps the stability even with small variations of the terrain. The presented model possesses, in its core, a Central Pattern Generator (CPG) based on neural oscillators, that has their activities regulated by the sensorial module, to allow the balance of the structure and stability of the movement, responding to environment variations. For the adaptation to the articulated structure and learning of movements, the controller has a cognitive module, responsible for the search of neural parameters, through genetic algorithms, and the feedback networks (sensorial answers to environment variations), with genetic programming. Results are presented related to the control of models humanoid, cheetah, frog, luxo and luxo-2, having these last two ones equal topologies, but with variations in the sizes of the bodies and freedom of the joints. All the models are tested in plain land and with slope.

The main goal of this project was to familiarize readers with the techniques used in real-time animation of 3D characters. This work is focused on two types of animation: keyframe animation and skeletal animation. There are described algorithms for software and hardware accelerated model deformations, keyframe interpolations, animation blending, inverse kinematics and ragdoll. The result of this project is a framework, which consists of an animation library, examples demonstrating library functions and tools for export animations from 3D Studio Max and MilkShape 3D.

碩士
國立臺南藝術大學
音像動畫研究所
98
With experimental characters, Direct Animation don’t use camera for shooting but scratch and draw on film directly. The technique is unique on visual and reveal the spirit of arts and crafts by it’s frame by frame process. In this thesis, I summarize the background of Direct Animation and list some works using film scratch skills. To illustrate how I using this skill I analyze my final project, “The Gecko,”and try to express the advantages of digital technique on the procuction stage. This thesis also presents the features of troditional and digital techniques and discuss the diffirence of applying computer technology to Direct Animation and storage medium. It also reveal a kind of new value of the sense of sight by esthetics aspect. The final is a summary of practice for experimental spirit and the view about my personal future direction.

碩士
淡江大學
資訊工程研究所
83
More and more commercial and entertainment industries are using the technology of 3D compuer graphics, which was traditionally requires special hardwares and softwares, to produce some special effects. After Microsoft and Macintosh Co. embedded 3D functions into their operation system, everyone can afford to play with the 3D computer graphics at home. People can easily use their home computers to produce their personal 3D animations. But the process of editing a 3D animation is extremely complicate and hard to harness. If a vivid 3D animation is desired, nearly hundreds of characters' joints must be manipulated in each frame to produce such effect which is a burden for the animator. To ease the complexity of producing 3D animations, many methods were suggested in the past and using the text script file to describe the desired animation is one of them. This thesis propose an object- oriented language to ease the user from the hassel of controlling character's motion without losing vividness of animation. This language borrow the concept of abstract data type from the object-oriented lamguage. It encapsulate each character into a data type and declare the state of its motion as its attributes. By this way, during animation, the character' s action becomes its methods. To validate this language, a translator is implemented to translate user's animation script file into a sequence of lower level frame scripts which are then used to generate consecutive frames of animation. After the translator scan in the script file, a global template file and, for each frame, a definition file are generated. With the help of this global template file, every definition file generate a image file and these image files are combined into an animation. This language enable the developer to predefine a library of characters such that, user can directly declare an instant of a character, just like "int a;" in C, and then directly 'command' it without to define it's action.

碩士
國立臺南大學
動畫媒體設計研究所
99
The issues related to the body images and tragedies are always shown in Tsai Ming-Liang’s films, and the author’s perspective of creation is influenced by Tsai’s flims and Auteur theory. The cinema has the feature of depicting the reality through camera machines. However, in animation, a radical aesthetics which is different from cinema is developed through the frame editing. The body images are important characteristics in Tsai’s films. The thesis establishes Tsai’s body perspective through the analysis and discussion of literature and film context. In the creation of thesis, the author animates “The Cloud”and “Earthly Paradise” inspired by Tsai , and attempts to discover his own personal language from the discussion of Tsai’s body perspective. According to the discoursing on tragedy, body perspective and related context of artworks, the research discusses the desire body and space conversation in Tsai’s films with the concepts of Gilles Deleuze’s “Body without organ”, Walter Benjamin’s “Trauerspiel”and Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s “Phenomenology of Perception”. The thesis tries to develop Tsai’s body perspective through the animated creations “The Cloud” and “ Earthly Paradise” and explores the creative language and style of author. We can discover three elemental particularities－Labyrinth,Content and Sensory, from the research and discourses on the clips possessed these three elements in Tsai’s films. In the process of creation, the differences of fundamental specialties between animation and cinema are found. First, Tsai captures motive images through camara machines in cinema, but in animation which is captured through the author’s coporal eyes and hands. As for the Montage editing in the post production, experimental activities can be explored in cinema. However, it isn’t true in animation. Finally, the author attempts and moves toward to the characteristics of “Mimetic language” and “Poet” in the results and performances of creations which are rarely mentioned in Tsai’s films.

In this thesis, the concept of style transfer for visual storytelling is introduced. Style transfer for visual storytelling is the process of identifying a definitive style of a source, such as an artist or culture, and applying the features of that style to a target, such as a character which has a different style. As a proof of concept, the style of the American film director Tim Burton is transferred to a character from Hindu mythology, Yamah. The style transfer is done based on the concept of 'Pattern Language' introduced by Christopher Alexander et al., in his book, 'A Pattern Language'. A set of patterns is developed based on the source and target. The target is then designed based on the patterns. The design is then visualized in a suitable medium.