Chaining Animations With Blending Transitions
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Solution Overview
Problem
Existing gaming and multimedia applications face challenges in providing intuitive controls that align with user motions, as conventional controls can be difficult to learn and may not accurately represent actual actions, leading to redundant or similar motions across users.
Innovation Solution
The implementation of techniques for chaining and blending animations, which involve selecting pre-canned animations and transitioning between them and user-captured motions, using gesture history and joint position, velocity, and acceleration to determine user intent and seed parameters for subsequent animations, allowing for seamless transitions and efficient animation control.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Ease of operation
If conventional controls are used in gaming applications, then the control mechanism is simple to implement, but the controls are difficult to learn and do not align with actual game actions
Solution Approach 1:
The system captures and copies actual user motions directly to control game characters, eliminating the need to learn abstract control mappings. Instead of mapping button presses to game actions, the system copies the user's physical movements (e.g., swinging arms to swing a virtual bat), making the controls intuitive and aligned with natural human behavior.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent replaces traditional mechanical control systems (keyboards, controllers with buttons and sticks) with a motion capture system that uses sensors and computer vision to detect and translate body movements. This substitution eliminates the intermediary mechanical interface between user intent and game action, creating a more direct and intuitive control experience.
2Adaptability or versatility
If user motions are captured and mapped to game actions, then the control alignment improves, but redundant or similar motions from different users create inconsistency
Solution Approach 1:
The system performs preliminary analysis of captured motions to identify redundant or similar movements across different users before mapping them to game actions. By pre-processing the motion data to recognize patterns and variations, the system can normalize these differences and ensure consistent game responses regardless of individual user motion variations.
Solution Approach 2:
The system incorporates feedback mechanisms that analyze captured motions and adjust the mapping to account for user variations. By providing feedback loops that recognize redundant motions and adjust the control mapping accordingly, the system maintains reliability and consistency across different users while still preserving the alignment between motion and game action.
3Productivity
If pre-canned animations are used instead of captured user motion, then animation efficiency improves, but the transition between pre-canned and user motion can be discontinuous
Solution Approach 1:
The system dynamically switches between pre-canned animations and user-captured motions based on the current game state and motion analysis. Rather than using a static approach, the system adapts in real-time, seamlessly blending pre-rendered efficient animations with live user motions when transitions are needed, thereby maintaining both animation efficiency and visual continuity.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent introduces an intermediary blending mechanism that smooths transitions between pre-canned animations and user-captured motions. This intermediary layer interpolates between the two animation sources, creating seamless transitions that maintain visual continuity while allowing the system to leverage the efficiency of pre-canned animations and the authenticity of user motions.
Data Source
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AI summary
In applications that display a representation of a user, it may be reasonable to insert a pre-canned animation rather than animating a user's captured motion. For example, in a tennis swing, the ball toss and take back in a serve could be a pre-canned animation, whereas the actual forward swing may be mapped from the user's gestures. An animation of a user's gestures can be chained together into sequences with pre-canned animations, where animation blending techniques can provide for a smoother transition between the animation types. Techniques for blending animations, that may comprise determining boundaries and transition points between pre-canned animations and animations based on captured motion, may improve animation efficiency. Gesture history, including joint position, velocity, and acceleration, can be used to determine user intent, seed parameters for subsequent animations and game control, and determine the subsequent gestures to initiate.