UCLA Adds Physics to Prat-falls 131
BaltoAaron writes "CNN.com is reporting on Petros Faloutsos , a UCLA scientist, that has developed a program that creates animation based almost solely on physics. Faloutsos "believes his animation program will one day allow virtual stunt artists to replace their flesh-and-blood counterparts in performing otherwise deadly feats of derring-do." "It's the Holy Grail of character animation. Everybody wants to do it, but there's not a whole lot of it out there right now.""
Really? (Score:1)
Re:Really? (Score:2, Funny)
Sure, there's nothing I want more than to see a film where someone fires a gun at Keanu Reeves, and then he turns into a "Grand Theft Auto 3" style character made of polygons and falls to the ground with blood squirting out of his aorta.
Re:Really? (Score:1)
Well, no, hence the reason you still need Marshall Fault to wear all those little bulbs while he runs around in tights.
The article actually does a real good job comparing the two methods. Worth a read.
Re:Really? (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Really? (Score:2, Informative)
These days a game programming text looks like an abridged edition of a scientific modelling text.
A big part of the trick is to have a realistic model of the human body. There are hundreds of joints of several varieties and many muscles controlled by the worlds most complex single entity(the brain). This makes it very hard to come up with a 'first principles' model. This is why most animation packages today (AFAIK) model the human body as a series of rigid parts(bones) connected by springs(muscles) with control points that the animator can use(the brain).
Kevin
Re:Really? (Score:1)
I know that for the last 2 or 3 years, my school has had a program called Interactive Physics [interactivephysics.com]. While it seems like it may be a little more basic than this program, the concept seems to be the same.
While I admit that I only have a little experience using it, from what I do know, using Interactive Physics, students can draw shapes on the screen, assign them physical properties, and then start the program and watch the animation that results.
What is the big difference that causes this program to merit an article and posting of its own? The major difference that I see between the two programs is that Interactive Physics only supports 2D animations (to the best of my knowledge), while the program mentioned in the aticle supports three.
Re:Really? (Score:3, Interesting)
I seem to remember for example that normal character run speed in Unreal Tournament is over 30mph. They also tend to disregard inertia for enhanced control.
Game engines could be modified for spatial realism. The Unreality Project for example. [unrealty.net] The problem is applying that technology for character models.
Regards
This is lame by comparison (Score:3, Interesting)
So what did you settle for? (Score:2)
Re:This is lame by comparison (Score:5, Informative)
research. Petros did not make a physical
simulation of a human walking. That had been
done many years earlier. Researchers at
Georgia Tech [Hodgins, et al.] and U Penn
[Badler, et al.] have focused on simulated
humans since the early 90's, simulating motions
from running to bicycling to diving.
Petros's work was on integrating these motions
together: so a character could walk, trip,
dive, land, roll, and stand back up again.
He used support vector machines to learn
the domains of acceptable pre- and post-
conditions of different movements and plan
the transitions.
stick to plots rather than eye candy (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:stick to plots rather than eye candy (Score:1)
this and similar lines of research (including
my current research):
Education: Teach martial arts and use
the system to visualize complex moves.
Choreography: Rapidly prototype complex
dance/gymnastics sequences realistially.
Art: If this tool can be made intuitive
for a novice user, character animation may
finally become an accessible art medium
for the masses.
Porn (Score:1, Insightful)
Not just normal physics, either (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Not just normal physics, either (Score:1)
Re:Not just normal physics, either (Score:1)
No way, dude. Haven't you seen The Matrix?
Sorry, couldn't resist.
Re:Not just normal physics, either - simulations (Score:1)
Basically, it's about using artificial intelligence to test market stuff. Interesting.
Re:Not just normal physics, either (Score:2, Funny)
Now the minister of propaganda will be able to artificially render himself in front of an artificially rendered, fully clothed, sculpture, and show scenes from the latest battle in our war on the world.
Seriously, I'm wondering what will happen on those fronts when we have the technology at hand to truly fool a viewing audience. At least right now I know that everything I see on TV is real!
Re:Not just normal physics, either (Score:1)
As you can probably guess, my confidence in peoples ability to tell fact from fiction is very low. And we're not even talking about the computer illiterate types here.
t.
Re:Not just normal physics, either (Score:1)
do not exist (aliens, dragons, an honest
Enron exec) or perform motions that would be
hard to convince humans/animals to do
(pig & elephant going at it, a'la Southpark).
I thought this had been done already (Score:1)
Re:I thought this had been done already (Score:5, Insightful)
If I fall down the stairs, what's going to happen to, say, my right arm, wrist, and hand? Sure, if I'm unconscious, that will all be dictated by physics - I'll flop around like a rag doll and you can nicely see all the reactive forces at work.
But if I'm conscious, how is the programming going to emulate my increasingly desperate attempts to keep from breaking my neck?
It seems to me that a better effect would be captured simply by hooking up motion sensors to a stuntman, telling him to take a five-minute break, and then throwing him down the stairs when he wasn't looking. The "mechanics" realm of physics has relatively simple rules; panic does not. So far, we don't have any formulas for the interaction of perceived danger, temperament, adrenaline, and what have you.
Re:I thought this had been done already (Score:1)
Prediction of the reaction of a slashdot user... (Score:2, Funny)
saw it (Score:3, Interesting)
I remember thinking that something about it looked unnatural, even a little cheap. Now I know it wasn't a low budget effect, just a new technique.
While this may one day create much more realistic effect in film, I'm not sure it's quite ready yet. Did this scene stand out for anyone else that saw this flick as a little "off"?
Curious (Score:2, Insightful)
Maya (Score:1)
Re:Maya (Score:2)
so whats the difference (Score:1)
Animate your own... (Score:5, Informative)
DANCE is a portable, open, plug-in based, object-oriented software package for physics-based character animation. It runs on Linux, Irix, Windows 98/NT and is being ported to MacOS by Joe Laszlo. One of its goals is to provide researchers with a common platform where they can test their control methods and share their results. In addition, it provides the common, yet complex functionality that everyone needs in a physics-based animation system, allowing researchers to concentrate on their research work. Dance has been used for a variety of physics-based applications that include biomechanics modelling and composeable controllers. For more information, please contact the authors.
It's available to download and play with!
Re:Animate your own... (Score:2)
Is that the same Laszlo that lives in the steam tunnels?
Re:Animate your own... (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Animate your own... (Score:1)
Everyone needs this in a physics-based animation system? Oy vey! I don't even have a physics-based animation system! I'm doubly behind. I hadn't any idea I needed anything like this! Where can I get it, quick, before someone finds out?
finaly (Score:2, Insightful)
Every computer generted graphic movie thus far has failed but no one is totaly sure why. Final fantasy though excelent with the eye popping candy you realize that is is just a computer after 5 mins of enteraction. I dont see this comming to true fruition as of yet. But yes it would make for alot better FX. Some times i just watch a movie for the FX.
The thing that worrys me most is that from most films eye candy takes up for true plot. Now if we can make a computer that can make really good plots the movies will rock.
But this does sound alot better then bill hicks idea of using the termanaly ill and people sentanced to death to do this work. Though it still is kinda appealing.
Kudos to any one that can pull it off am sure they will who knows one day we can all make gore fest as a plug in to adobe premere.
Re:finaly (Score:5, Informative)
Uh... Toy Story I/II, Bugs Life, Monster's Inc, Shrek, Antz (which I think sucked but did good business)... I wouldn't exactly call them failures.
Re:finaly (Score:1)
They might have made a ton of money. You can still tell its fake. Alot of the movies are shooting for realizm. They have advanced computer generted characters but still you can pick them out of a crowd.
More realizem would be nice, and this might translate into better manipulation into video game fields.
Re:finaly (Score:1)
This they achieved admirably.
Max
Re:finaly (Score:1)
I think you're equating photo-realistic computer graphics with a successful film. The list quoted in the previous post [slashdot.org] by FatRatBastard shows that you can have one without the other. Also, implementing true physics in a film will not ensure photo-realism; I think that's more in the realm of optics, not physics.
Now if we can make a computer that can make really good plots the movies will rock.
Hell, I'll be happy if we can get a human to pull that off consistently
Good for him, but (Score:4, Informative)
There has been research in this area being done for years, much of it presented at SIGGRAPH. There are techniques to animate characters through intricate plots just by specifying behavioral charactics, techniques to apply motion dynamics to characters of significantly different shape, and even "video puppetry" that allows images to self-animate in response to speech. All are a number of years old. All were hailed as holy grails. This just seems to be a case of CNN finally noticing.
At last year's SIGGRAPH, everyone already knew about polynomial textures, because there had been a news story about it. To me, though, the highlight of the show was that it is now possible to walk around with an uncalibrated, handheld camera, and completely automatically get a decent 3-D model out of it (textured, of course). No news story about that.
refs? (Score:1)
Sound too good to be true. (Score:3, Interesting)
That sounds amazing. Does this mean that a formerly HARD AI problem (vision & representation) is now solved?! Do you recall any names or something, so that I can look for more information?
Covering my ass (Score:1)
(A little quick on the trigger there maybe. To clarify; I do understand the difference between being able to create a 3d-world "as you go" (easier) from inferring it without being able to move about freely, and then going from (possibly erraneously inferred) 3d-data to "This is a chair" (harder), but the this sounds so much more advanced than the things I've read about in AI research (1990s stuff)). Pointers would be much appreciated.
Re:Sound too good to be true. (Score:1)
that the MIT AI geniuses of the 50's expected
vision to be solved in ten years.
don't know how to take a bunch if pixels/voxels/polygons and determine that they
are a toilet. Or even "easier" problems such as
perfect segmentation or stereo-matching.
Systems like the 10+ yard line in football
aren't even perfect (what if shadows move or
the sun/clouds do funky stuff or green uniforms interfere?). They have attendants present to
correct quickly any errors.
Re:Sound too good to be true. (Score:2)
Yes we do. But not if it's noisy, or it's a toilet we haven't programmed the system to recognize, or it's at an angle we left out of the set. Or you're sitting on it.
Look up "radial logarithmic mapping".
--Blair
Re:Sound too good to be true. (Score:1)
Re:Good for him, but (Score:2)
Re:Good for him, but (Score:1)
There are a lot of restrictions for scenes that can be modeled this way with current structure from motion algorithms. Occlusions usually cause severe problems, because the error model for the correspondence points does not take occlusions into account.
Structure from motion is a low level method which operates with pixels, not objects. In order to deal with occlusions, higher level object models need to be integrated somehow into the system, but this is far from easy. I'd like to see any references of such systems.
Animats has done this for years... (Score:3, Informative)
Years and years...
http://www.animats.com/
Ten years at SIGGRAPH (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Ten years at SIGGRAPH (Score:1)
david baraff's & andy witkin's notes for physical simulation:
cmu [cmu.edu] or pixar [pixar.com]
Oooh I want! (Score:1)
SIGGRAPH (Score:2, Funny)
Re:SIGGRAPH (Score:1)
a story a year later, at least there won't
be repeats.
Hells Bells (Score:3)
On the upside, the blood & guts is going to look a lot cooler.
Re:Hells Bells (Score:1)
Re:Hells Bells (Score:1)
Re:Hells Bells (Score:1)
physics, you can tweak it and warp it to your
satisfaction. An analogy could be that you
cannot paint impressionistically if you
cannot paint realistically.
This could be useful... (Score:5, Interesting)
That is, there are many other factors that cgi imagery comes no where close to mimicking, so even if tommorow this software let you create completely realistic human animation, it wouldn't put the union out of business yet.
Many of the more spectacular stunts in our favorite action movies...such as the ones in crouching tiger...used the computer simply to composite the scene elements (like replacing the ropes from the flying harnesses), rather than recreate the scene. Or that train crash in Die Hard 3. The computer is often used to combine several "real" footages (like combining the actors on one set and the dangerous stuff on another) rather than do a whole scene, anyway.
However, games could be great with this tech. I have always wanted to see a realistic fighting game, one with actual full physics animation, medical grade damage modeling (and when someone is hurt, realistic degradation of their performance), and the completely unscripted movements that an animation engine like this would allow.
For instance, if someone punched your on screen avatar in the gut, your character would first stagger with the blow, and then shake back and forth as he tries to catch his breath. If you hit one of the attack commands at that moment, the subsequent attack animation would be modified by him still recovering from the blow, as WELL as what the other player was doing. A compltely freeform system. Yes, I know its possible to fake some of this now but there are some obvious limits. For instance, no matter how hard or how light your avatar got punched, he will probably still stagger with the same animation.
And of course the "beowolf cluster" of all these technologies : a massively multiplayer online game where you can run around fighting other avatars like above, as well as casting spells, killing monsters, leveling, looting, camping, kill stealing... All the rest of the good things we come to expect from games of this type
Re:This could be useful... (Score:1)
Be sure you know what you're asking for... (Score:3, Insightful)
Let's face it...reality isn't fun. It takes a lot of money put from a special effects budget to make a movie look exciting. And that's because in real-life, things just aren't that cool.
Super-human Avatars (Score:2)
A good model to follow would be the kind of cartoon violence in movies like Die Hard, etc. Bruce gets hit with a lead pipe. He reacts with the full *force* of the impact (ie. he gets sent flying to the ground) but he gets up again - limping, with a bit of blood on him, but otherwise OK.
When I shoot a rocket at someone in Quake, I expect them to react to the blast more than by just loosing health. They should be sent flying, or at least knocked over. Same goes for anyone close to them. So as not to affect game-play adversely, the blast radius could be kept unrealistically small (and fall off quickly) but within it I expect realistic reactions!
If I shoot someone in the shoulder with a gun, they should react. They might do a quarter turn on impact, even though the amount taken from their health is the same.
Remember what the goal for FPS is: fun violence. Make the game more realistic but don't go overboard at the expense of fun.
Re:Super-human Avatars (Score:2)
Re:This could be useful... (Score:2)
Online Games (Score:1)
(Of course, knowing EQ, the requirements will go up to a Quad Xeon 2Ghz with 4GB RAM and dual GeForce 4's. And it will still be slow)
Smell my finger! (Score:1, Troll)
Really!
Demetri Terzopoulos' page (Score:1)
http://www.mrl.nyu.edu/~dt/
This is rather old, last year's SIGGRAPH and all, but I thought the even older artificial fish were always kinda cool.
Not true (Score:1)
Human brain still necessary. (Score:3, Insightful)
My issue is that a lot more than physics needs to go into an animation. There's brain up there controlling all those muscles, it's not just a bunch of sticks and rubber bands. A character animator is an *actor*, part of his or her job is to give the appearance of intention to a character's performance.
Falling down the stairs is (relatively) easy. Show me the panic the moment he realizes he's lost his balance and can't stop himself. Does he flop like a drunk or roll out like Jet Li?
You still need to control a character with a human brain, whether that brain belongs to a mocapped stunt man or an animator.
CNN title misleading (Score:3, Informative)
Ph.D. thesis at Toronto. Though he is
most likely continuing the line of research
as a professor, the article is about his
thesis work.
I don't get it-- this is OLD NEWS (Score:2, Redundant)
You just create your model and connect the "bones" (fundimental objects that move) via articulated joints that could swivel in any direction you specify. Then determine what forces are acting on it (gravity or wind for example) and stuff like how the objects interact (do they bounce? or stick?) and then just hit "play" and off it goes...
What's the big deal here?
Re:I don't get it-- this is OLD NEWS (Score:3, Informative)
the second paragraph, you are not doing
forward/inverse kinematics, but rather
forward/inverse dynamics, a much harder
problem.
And things like trees and jello behave
passively, that is they don't produce any
forces on their own from muscles, motors, etc.
My guess is what you are referring to in the
first paragraph is simple spring-mass systems.
Modal analysis can be used to obtain more
accurate deformations for things like trees.
But if you want to simulate humans, you need
to model the human's muscles as well if the
human is anything but limp. The interaction
can be very complex (especially given closed
loop situations such as two legs on the ground).
Re:I don't get it-- this is OLD NEWS (Score:2)
Re:I don't get it-- this is OLD NEWS (Score:1)
Re:I don't get it-- this is OLD NEWS (Score:2)
Frankly, I'm a little surprised that you know about features of Softimage, but you have trouble understanding how useful a 'real world physics simulator' would be. I have trouble beliving an animator would ever say 'what's the big deal?' to this type of goal.
I would love to animate a crash landing in Lightwave where instead of keyframing every little thing, instead I set up a bunch of interesting areas to be affected by the crash. I'd like the results to surprise me instead of having to meticulously plan out every little thing that has to happen. I think that's what they mean by the stunt metaphor.
Here's another example, what if a character opened a door and it caused the curtains in front of a window to billow for a moment as the pressure changed. To do that today, you'd have to animate the character opening the door, and *then* set up a totally seperate effect wher you place a 'wind generator' behind the curtain and tell it 'blow briefly for about a second on the same keyframe that the door opens.' The curtain would be a seperate object, and the 'wind' physics would only affect it. Nothing else in the room (unless specified) would react either. So a plant sitting on the dresser might sit unnecessarily still.
It's that type of subtle interaction that it may not occur to an animator to create. Every little physical response like this in the 3D world adds a new layer of believability to the viewer. This makes animation more immersive, and more rewarding to do because the user gets sucked into the world that the animator has created.
Try turning on your imagination a little bit and you might just find what the big deal is, instead of saying 'I already have that if I just jump through a few dozen extra hoops.' It's an attitude I've seen aspiring animators have over the years, but it takes them a while to discover that saying "so what?" is also saying "I don't feel like growing today."
This would remove *any* point... (Score:2)
Jackie Chan rocks!
How did that ever get posted to /. (Score:1, Flamebait)
The foot (Score:4, Funny)
I thought Terry Gilliam was the Holy Grail of anima.. oh nevermind..
Movies & Physics? (Score:2)
And when was the last time you saw a movie where the explosion is seen BEFORE it is heard?
Not to mention virtually every space fiction movie ever made with the sole exception of 2001.
Re:Movies & Physics? (Score:2)
Sarcasm aside, the movie industry cares very much about physics. They may exaggerate them from time to time (like the jumping bus, heh), but they pay very careful attention to it when they are doing animated movies. Take Snow White, for example, they had a scene with lots of people dancing in it. They actually filmed a bunch of dancers and rotoscoped them, using their motions to make the characters move in the movie. The result? A surprising level of realism in that scene.
Hollywood cares more about physics than your limited over-simplification indicates.
painful lack of animation experience on display (Score:1)
simply put, physics based animation will have a _long_ distance to go before it starts to look "good" to anyone who wants to see anything beyond "physics".
The inherent problem is that there is rarely a one-to-one correspondence between something being "physically accurate" and something being "visually entertaining". in other words, entertaining/compelling visuals aren't necessarily based in physical reality.
Prime anecdotal evidence: Wile E. Coyote.
"But that's not live action!" you say. Well, this also applies to the vast majority of live-action "action movie" sequences; the overwhelming majority of these are composed of multiple takes shot from multiple angles on multiple sets, and later composited/edited together - in other words, the action was _not_physically_possible_, but had to be "assembled" from lots of smaller, quasi-physically-possible elements.
many of the posts here reference video game physics as unrealistic; they've got it exactly right - except that this is far more than a video-game-specific issue.
of course, in the long term the need to "ficitionalize/cheat" at physics may be addressed by a layer operating _above_ the physics engine (perhaps tweaking physical laws, running a simulation but changing the rules over time, etc.), but in the end it's still going to take a lot of direct creative input in order to get anything out of these systems that anyone will _want_ to see.
and it will be an even longer time before the output from that kind of system will produce anything not directly comparable to graphic work entirely based on photoshop (or GIMP) "filters" - i.e. it will look pre-packaged, cheap, and not terribly distinctive.
while I really appreciate the work that these people are doing (and believe that it will have wonderful applicatons in court cases/medicine/sports), calling physics-based animation a "holy grail" for _storytelling_ is nothing other than to mistake the long term goal of these projects as being to completely remove humans from the creative process of filmmaking.
and I've already seen "Battlefield Earth", thank you.
- jdbo
Saw his demo last month (Score:3, Informative)
Faloutsos' work is not actually focused on the physics models, but on the control programs for the virtual actors. This allows dynamic, force-based animation (as opposed to kinematic, position-based animation). Each model has a set of controllers for various tasks like walking, running, jumping forward, moving from a prone position to a standing position, etc. Each controller knows its "competencies" -- the conditions under which it can successfully guide the model. These are used to hand off control from one controller to the next as the model goes through a complex motion or reacts to external forces.
The sample movies that Faloutsos showed were mostly unscripted. They would start with a model in a simple standing state, which would then respond to user-controlled forces like pushing or throwing simulated balls at the model from various angles. Various balance-recovery controllers would take over depending on how the model was displaced; if none of them were succesful then the model would fall down, and then use one of its controllers for returning to a standing position. All of this appeared incredibly realistic and human.
Also, as another poster noted, DANCE [ucla.edu] is available under a "free for non-commercial use" license (not free under the FSF or Debian definitions, but a good deal in my opinion). He encouraged us to try it out, explaining that research like his has suffered from a lack of common infrastructure, leading to a lot of reinvented wheels. He expressed hope that the DANCE framework would allow more innovative research with less duplicated work.
Already been done (Score:2)
Just imagine... (Score:1)
Finally, a way to simulate... (Score:1)
Killing dreams, dammit (Score:1)
Videos of this effect are here (Score:2, Informative)
Fictional Physics would be more fun... (Score:2)
Physics are.. well.. expected. If I could change the rules around a bit, I could create fun yet silly little movies. Remember that Far Side cartoon where a black hole suddenly formed in that guy's apartment, and everything started getting sucked into it? Heh I could animate that! Let me tweak the physics a bit, and I could really have some fun with it!
not to be utterly humorless (Score:1)
physics modeling big step for gaming (Score:1)
With the introduction of physics modeling, your victim can die a thousand different deaths, and remove that deja-vue feeling you get after killing the thousandth Strogg.
While many games have incorporated aspects of physical modeling into their games, I believe this stuff is finally about to pop. I know that the Sony PS2 was built on MathEngine's physics SDK, and Seamus Blackley (one of the pioneers of the genre and developer of Trespasser, the first game to incorporate physics into most aspects of gameplay - and was a flop) has been hoisted by Microsoft for the Xbox developement. Maybe soon we'll stop getting that feeling everytime we lock and load that someone is whispering in our ear to "ignore the man behind the curtain!"
Related links:
(2001) http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/9.08/physics.h
(1999) http://zdnet.com.com/2100-11-514530.html
Physics Engine players:
http://www.mathengine.com
http://www.h
Re:Smurfs : The Socialist Propaganda +2, Funny (Score:1)