Humans and Animals

Jessica Fernandes
July 26, 2002

With increasing interest in creating realistic characters, be they human or animal, animators, modelers and engineers continue to push the boundaries of the possible. Exploring such concepts as human body deformation, hair modeling and editing, and modeling and rendering of realistic feathers, this paper strove to shed some light on advancements in the area.

In terms of the hair modeling approach described, it succeeded where others fell short - enabling modeling of complex hair. This multiresolution hair model can be edited to create extremely complex hairstyles. Rendering with shadows and controlling antialiasing filters further extends the system's capabilities, creating impressive results. In terms of future prospects, the speaker mentioned that his team is currently looking into animating their model.

In the hopes of creating a complete pipeline to model and render feathers systematically, many factors need to be taken into account. To model individual feathers, the mesostructure of each feather blade must be captured. The complexity of the system increases due to the fact that there are different types of feathers on different parts of a bird. The system presented dealt with issues concerning the addition of these thousands of feathers to the bird. To minimize overhead, the technique is based on structured feather anatomy. Details of the individual feathers are never stored. Instead, their compact representation is stored. Adding randomness to feathers, by inserting random gaps (such as those created when a twig catches the feather) further adds to their realism.

Be it through the use of techniques to create realistic body deformations, hairstyles, feathers or eye movement, technological advances continue to challenge our perception of reality. Already we find ourselves asking what is real and what is not. It seems that the future promises to more fully, if not completely, wipe away this uncertainty.