Mesh Approximation for Animated Characters

A widely used method for character animation involves embedding a simple skeleton with a character model and then animating the character by moving the underlying skeleton. The character’s skin is required to move and deform along with the skeleton. Research into this problem has resulted in a number of different skinning frameworks. There has, however, been no objective attempt to compare these methods. We compare three of the skinning frameworks that are computationally efficient enough to be used for real-time animation. These frameworks are: Skeletal Subspace Deformation, Multi-Weight Enveloping and Animation Space. The performance of the three frameworks is tested by generating the skins for a number of poses for which the ideal skin is known. These generated skin meshes are then compared to the ideal skins using various mesh comparison techniques as well as user comparisons.