Dual Quaternion Blending Algorithm and Its Application in Character Animation

In this paper we generalize established techniques and blending algorithm for quaternions to dual quaternions to represent rigid transformations compactly. With the visualization of OpenGL, we employ dual quaternions to achieve character animation in real time. Classical quaternions are only able to characterize rotations although combination of matrix calculation and quaternions operator has been a popular tool in character animation since 1990s. In character animation and some other applications of 3D computer graphics, we are actually faced with rigid transformation which just includes translation and rotation. Similar to the way quaternions represent rotations, dual quaternions represent rigid transformations. Algorithms based on dual quaternions own better properties than those based on quaternions in practical applications, which include reduced overhead, increased computational efficiency and coordinate invariance. Finally we demonstrate the effectiveness of dual quaternions blending algorithm by cartoon male and female mesh models with the animation of walking and waving..