Video games: posing in 3D

An UdeM computer scientist and his PhD candidate have developed a tool for animators to use bitmap sketches to control how a character stands and moves in three dimensions. What's the best way to get 3D characters in videogames to look real and expressive? Two computer scientists at Université de Montréal have come up with answer: use simple bitmap sketches to make their poses more lifelike. Assistant professor Mikhail Bessmeltsev and his PhD candidate Kirill Brodt have developed an animation tool that uses drawings to control how videogame characters stand and move in three dimensions. The duo's study is published on July 22 in ACM Transactions on Graphics. We asked them to tell us more. Artists frequently capture character poses via raster sketches; the process is called storyboarding. They then use these drawings as a reference while posing a 3D character in their software.