CIS 5620 Animation
A graduate-level course that teaches the math behind fundamental animation concepts, techniques, and tools, such as frames of reference, homogeneous matrices, rigid-body transformations, orientation representations and their conversions (rotation matrices, Euler angles, quaternions), position interpolation using Catmull-Rom and Hermite splines, Bézier curve construction using Bernstein polynomials, the de Casteljau algorithm, and matrix methods; Euler angle and quaternion interpolation; Forward Kinematics; and Inverse Kinematics solvers, such as limb-based, cyclic coordinate descent (CCD), and the pseudo-inverse method.
Splines
Linear splines. Cubic Catmull-Rom splines and Hermite splines. Bézier curve construction using Bernstein polynomials, the de Casteljau algorithm, and matrix representation. Continue reading Splines
Orientation interpolation
Linear and cubic interpolation of Euler angles. Spherical linear and spherical cubic interpolation of quaternions using SLERP. Continue reading Orientation interpolation
Forward Kinematics
Interpolation of keyframe poses using linear quaternion splines. Continue reading Forward Kinematics
Inverse Kinematics
Limb-based IK and coordinate cyclic descent (CCD) IK. Continue reading Inverse Kinematics
Guide joints and foot IK
Terrain navigation using a guide joint for fluid walk cycle animation and with proper foot orientation. Continue reading Guide joints and foot IK