List of Emotions

Below is a list of common emotions that when animated, will give you a good variety of assignments. To add additional variety, try animating them in different intensity levels from subtle (realistic) to exaggerated (cartoony).

The following emotions are:

• Shyness
• Disgusted
• Fear
• Surprised
• Joy
• Happy
• Anger
• Inquisitiveness
• Sadness

Hooks, Ed. "Acting for Animators". Portsmouth, NH. Heinemann. 2000.

Creating an Abstract

Start first by identifying your thesis. This should be done in a single sentence.

Then answer your thesis by asking these questions:

1. What is the problem or question that the work addresses?
2. Why is it important?
3. How was the investigation undertaken?
4. What was found and what does it mean?

You should find the answers to questions 1 and 2 in your Introduction; the answer to question 3 will be a summary of your Methods; and the answer to question 4 will summarise your Results, Discussion and Conclusion.

Citation:

Monash University Online. 2003. Monash University 15, June 2007. <http://www.monash.edu.au/lls/hdr/write/5.11.html>

Automating Autonomous Pedestrians

By Wei Shao, PhD

Shao's abstract and introduction explains how difficult it is to replicate realistic human walk cycles to give structure life. His thesis touches on a subject that I have been thinking about and that is the idea of the connection between viewer and animation. He is studying and exploring ways, in which the animation can be more believable. The beginning of his abstract sets a nice premise for his course of study. A sample of his abstract is below:

" State-of-the-art computer graphics modeling and rendering techniques can be used to create photorealistic imagery of static objects, but they do not yet enable the automated animation of human beings with anywhere near as much fidelity. This thesis addresses the challenge. Our focus is the emulation of real pedestrians in urban environments. To this end, we develop an entirely autonomous pedestrian model that requires no centralized, global control whatsoever and is capable of performing a variety of activities in synthetic urban spaces, such as a virtual train station."

Shao, Wei PhD. "Automating Autonomous Pedestrians". New York Universtiy Press. 2006.
http://wwwlib.umi.com/dissertations/fullcit/3205679

Artificial Intelligence :: Expressive Emotion

By Alyssa Lees

This thesis explores alternatives and tools for making MOCAP work. In it, she explores expressive movement, deformable rigs, motion data and the ability of the computer to adjust and fill in the blanks of recorded movement. Her introduction not only sets her claim, but also describes the industry and breaks down what to expect chapter by chapter throughout the thesis. A snippet of her abstract is below:

" The key aspect is the creation of a deformable skeleton representation of the human body using a unique machine learning approach. The deformable skeleton is modeled by replicating the actual movements of the human spine. The second step relies on exploiting the subtle aspects of motion, such as hand movement to create an emotional effect visually. Both of these approaches involve exaggerating the movements in the same vein as traditional 2-D animation technique of 'squash and stretch'. Finally, a novel technique for the application of style on a baseline motion capture sequence is developed. All of these approaches are rooted in machine learning techniques. Linear discriminate analysis was initially applied to a single phrase of motion demonstrating various style characteristics in LABAN notation. A variety of methods including nonlinear PCA, and LLE were used to learn the underlying manifold of spine movements. Nonlinear dynamic models were learned in attempts to describe motion segments versus single phrases. In addition, the dissertation focuses on the variety of obstacles in learning with motion data. This includes the correct parameterization of angles, applying statistical analysis to quaternions, and appropriate distance measures between postures. "

Lees, Alyssa. "Expressive Emotion". New York University, 2006.
http://wwwlib.umi.com/dissertations/fullcit/3234154

Introduction Example

Designing and Implementing Kiwi: A Secure Distrubuted File System for HTTPS:
by Austin Che

http://austinche.name/docs/kiwi.pdf

In his introduction, Austin describes his motivation

1. Motivation : Brief history and describe terms.
2. Current Status and how this improves industry.
3. How the thesis document is broken down and organized.

Introduction Example

Designing and Implementing Kiwi: A Secure Distrubuted File System for HTTPS:
by Austin Che

http://austinche.name/docs/kiwi.pdf

In his introduction, Austin describes his motivation

1. Motivation : Brief history and describe terms.
2. Current Status and how this improves industry.
3. How the thesis document is broken down and organized.

Thesis Example: --Faces and Hands-- : Modeling and Animating Anatomical and Photorealistic Models with Regard to the Communicative Competence of Virtu

Title:
--Faces and Hands-- : Modeling and Animating Anatomical and Photorealistic Models with Regard to the Communicative Competence of Virtual Humans

Abstract:
In order to be believable, virtual human characters must be able to communicate in a human-like fashion realistically. This dissertation contributes to improving and automating several aspects of virtual conversations. We have proposed techniques to add non-verbal speech-related facial expressions to audiovisual speech, such as head nods for of emphasis.
During conversation, humans experience shades of emotions much more frequently than the strong Ekmanian basic emotions. This prompted us to develop a method that interpolates between facial expressions of emotions to create new ones based on an emotion model.

In the area of facial modeling, we have presented a system to generate plausible 3D face models from vague mental images. It makes use of a morphable model of faces and exploits correlations among facial features. The hands also play a major role in human communication. Since the basis for every realistic animation of gestures must be a convincing model of the hand, we devised a physics-based anatomical hand model, where a hybrid muscle model drives the animations. The model was used to visualize complex hand movement captured using multi-exposure photography.

Source:
Albrecht, Irene. "--Faces and Hands-- : Modeling and Animating Anatomical and Photorealistic Models with Regard to the Communicative Competence of Virtual Humans." D4 MPI-INF Publications: Thesis. December 2005. Universitat des Saarlandes. 29 April 2007. http://domino.mpi-inf.mpg.de/intranet/ag4/ag4publ.nsf/AuthorEditorIndividualView/e3bf1293dc9b6e43c125713900501de7?OpenDocument

Thesis Example: Animate Pillow Project

By selectively focusing on the details of movement and gesture over true-to-life reproduction, animators create a stronger emotional bond with their audiences by allowing people the visual space to enrich the animation with their own experiences.

Photorealistic animation does not leave enough visual white space for people to project their imaginations into in order to fill in the discrepancies between what they see and what they experience as real. Because of this the audience is denied access to the emotional projection and anthropomorphism that effectively creates empathy in animation. By selectively focusing on details of movement and gesture, animators create a stronger emotional bond with their audience by allowing people to enrich the animation with their own experiences. Relying on this, applicants at Disney are asked to submit animations of a sack of flour expressing various emotions as part of their reel as a test of their abilties to take something so blank and featureless as a pillow and imbue it with life. Playing off this idea, I propose that effective empathy can be attained with animatronics using the same basic elements: anthropomorphism, emotional projection, and the gestures and motion that can be achieved with a pillow -- as opposed to the standard robotic approaches which feature either extreme realism in the appearance of an living creature, or focus on multiple degrees of facial articulation.

Source:

Riley, Phaedra. "Animate Pillow Project". ITP Thesis Presentations. May 2005. New York. April, 2007 http://itp.nyu.edu/thesis/spring2005/detail.php?project_id=198

Fast Facial Animation Design for Virtual Humans

By: S. Garchery. A. Egges, N. Magnenat-Thalmann
MIRALA, University of Geneva, Geneva Switzerland

http://www2.miralab.unige.ch/papers/386.pdf.

Abstract
Designing facial animation parameters according to a specific
model can be time consuming. In this paper we present a fast
approach to design facial animations based on minimal
information (only feature points). All facial deformations are
automatically computed from MPEG-4 feature points. We also
present an extension of this approach that allows to
personalize or to customize the deformations according to
different characteristics. We will describe different prototypes
of the facial animation system, available on different
platforms. Then, we demonstrate how emotions and
expression can be incorporated into the facial animation
system.

Egges, A., Garchery, S. Fast Facial Animation Design for Emotional Virtual Humans. 2001.