Research
Here are some of our research areas. Click to learn more about the specific projects:Character Animation and Motion Capture
- Synthesis of Responsive Motion Using a Dynamic Model : We present an automatic method to synthesize the movement of a responsive virtual character under unexpected perturbations using a nonlinear dynamic model learned from very few captured examples.
- Fluid Simulation with Articulated Bodies : An algorithm for creating realistic animations of characters that are swimming through fluids.
- Interactive Synthesis of Human-Object Interaction : An interactive motion editing tool for creating dynamic scenes with human and object interaction. The approach solves for an optimal control problem that leverages methods for physics-based rigid body control and kinematics-based human motion editing.
- Optimization-based Interactive Motion Synthesis : A physics-based approach to synthesizing motion of a virtual character in a dynamically varying environment. The approach is general enough to encompass a wide variety of highly interactive motions.
- Dextrous Manipulation from a Grasping Pose : An optimization-based approach to synthesizing hand manipulations from a starting grasping pose.
- Performance-Based Control Interface for Character Animation : We describe a system that directly uses human motion performance to provide a radically different, and much more expressive interface for controlling virtual characters.
- Animating Responsive Characters with Dynamic Constraints in Near-Unactuated Coordinates : We present an approach to animating physically responsive virtual characters by combining kinematic pose control with dynamic constraints in the muscle actuation space.
- Synthesis of Interactive Hand Manipulation : We present an interactive physics-based motion synthesis technique for creating hand manipulation across a wide variety of tasks, objects, user interventions, and stylistic preferences.
- Deforming Meshes that Split and Merge : A method for accurately tracking the moving surface of deformable materials in a manner that gracefully handles topological changes.
- Interactive Tensor Field Design and Visualization on Surfaces : We present an interactive design system that allows a user to create a wide variety of surface tensor fields with control over the number and location of degenerate points.
- Feature-Based Surface Parameterization and Texture Mapping : In this paper, we propose an automatic parameterization method that segments a surface into patches that are then flattened with little stretch.
- Reconstructing Surfaces : We present a new method of surface reconstruction that generates smooth and seamless models from sparse, noisy, non-uniform, and low resolution range data.
- Fluid Simulation with Articulated Bodies : An algorithm for creating realistic animations of characters that are swimming through fluids.
- Deforming Meshes that Split and Merge : A method for accurately tracking the moving surface of deformable materials in a manner that gracefully handles topological changes.
- Fast Viscoelastic Behavior with Thin Features : We combine a high resolution surface mesh with a frequently re-meshing tetrahedral finite element simulator to efficiently animate a wide range of deformable materials.
- A Finite Element Method for Animating Large Viscoplastic Flow : We animate large plastic deformations of solid materials by introducing a new plasticity model and a finite element simulator that makes use of on-the-fly re-meshing.
- Animating Corrosion and Erosion : We add physical and chemical effects to a fluid simulation to animate natural phenomena such as erosion, sedimentation, and acidic corrosion.
- Keyframe Control of Complex Particle Systems Using the Adjoint Method : We use the adjoint method to control systems of interacting particles -- paying special attention to simulations of cloth and flocking behavior.
- Water Drops on Surfaces : We present a physically-based method to enforce contact angles at the intersection of fluid free surfaces and solid objects, allowing us to simulate a variety of small-scale fluid phenomena including water drops on surfaces.
- Melting and Flowing : We present a fast and stable system for animating materials that melt, flow, and solidify. Examples of real-world materials that exhibit these phenomena include melting candles, lava flow, the hardening of cement, icicle formation, and limestone deposition.
- Terrain Synthesis from Digital Elevation Models : We present an example-based system for terrain synthesis
- Interactive Tensor Field Design and Visualization on Surfaces : We present an interactive design system that allows a user to create a wide variety of surface tensor fields with control over the number and location of degenerate points.
- Texture Transfer : Mappings between surfaces have a variety of uses, including texture transfer, multi-way morphing, and surface analysis. Given a 4D implicit function that defines a morph between two implicit surfaces, this article presents a method of calculating a mapping between the two surfaces.
- Geometric Texture Synthesis : Patterns on real-world objects are often due to variations in geometry across the surface. Height fields and other common parametric methods cannot synthesize many forms of geometric surface texture such as thorns, scales, and bark. We present an example-based technique for synthesizing a variety of geometric textures on a model's surface.
- Graphcut Textures: Image and Video Synthesis Using Graph Cuts : n this paper we introduce a new algorithm for image and video texture synthesis. In our approach, patch regions from a sample image or video are transformed and copied to the output and then stitched together along optimal seams to generate a new (and typically larger) output.