Procedural rhythmic character animation: an interactive Chinese lion dance: Research Articles

The creation of a stylistic animation through the use of high-level controls has always been a design goal for computer animation software. In this paper, we propose a procedural animation system, called rhythmic character animation playacting (RhyCAP), which allows a designer to interactively direct animated characters by adjusting rhythmic parameters such as tempo, exaggeration, and timing. The motions thus generated reflect the intention of the director and also adapt to environmental obstacle constraints. We use a sequence of martial-art steps in the performance of a Chinese lion dance to illustrate the effectiveness of the system. The animation is generated by composition of common motion elements, concisely represented in an action graph. We have implemented an animation control program that allows Chinese lion dance to be choreographed interactively. This authoring tool also serves as a useful means for preserving this part of world cultural heritage. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.This study is supported in part by National Science Council, R.O.C. under contract no. NSC 94-2213-E-004-006. The authors wish to thank the editor and anonymous reviewers for their insightful comments on an earlier version of the manuscript.