Combined Direct and Inverse Kinematic Control for Articulated Figure Motion Editing

A new approach is presented for the animation of articulated figures. We propose a system of articulated motion design which offers a full combination of both direct and inverse kinematic control of the joint parameters. Such an approach allows an animator to interactively specify goal-directed changes to existing sampled joint motions, resulting in a more general and expressive class of possible joint motions. The fundamental idea is to consider any desired joint space motion as a reference model inserted into the secondary task of an inverse kinematic control scheme. This approach profits from the use of halfspace cartesian main tasks in conjunction with a parallel control of the articulated figure called the coach-trainee metaphor.In addition, a transition function is introduced so as to guarantee the continuity of the control. The resulting combined kinematic control scheme leads to a new methodology of joint motion editing which is demonstrated through the improvement of a functional model of human walking.