Enhancing Game Animation Techniques: Keyframes, Blending, and Compression Strategies

1. Maths & Technologies for GamesAnimation: Practicalities CO3303 Week 3

2. Today’s Lecture • Animation Issues • Transformation Decomposition • Keyframes • Interpolation Revisited • Playing Animations • Blending Multiple Animations • Motion Extraction

3. Animation Issues • We have seen a method to interpolate a model’s pose between keyframes • Surely we can now build an animation system? • No • Several major practicalities to deal with • Need further refinements to the previous theory

4. Animation Issues • Assume our game has: • 30 characters with 64 bones, 60 animations each • Animations are 5 seconds long, store 8 keyframes / s • Memory usage = 30*64*60*5*8* sizeof(keyframe) • If our keyframe is a 4x4 matrix then = 295Mb • If a quaternion, position and scaling, then = 184Mb • Rather too much memory used, especially for a console • Can improve on this

5. Animation Issues • Sometimes need to play more than one animation at the same time • E.g. Character running and firing a gun • Or character standing and firing • Would like to blend the firing animation with the character’s other motion – 2 animations at once • Simple interpolation insufficient • Also, how to combine movement in the scene with movement in the animation? • Will look briefly at several practical animation techniques to address these issues

6. Transformation Decomposition • Each bone in a model has a separate transform • Each relative to its parent, forming a hierarchy • Last year we used matrices for this hierarchy • Now we have seen that matrices are not a good choice for animation in general • Expensive to interpolate & too much storage • So we decompose the transform into: • Rotation, translation, scale etc. • Use vectors for translation and scale • Quaternions for rotation

7. Transformation Decomposition • Can write a quaternion-based transformation class • With the same functionality as a matrix class • But able to interpolate rotations efficiently • Use for current transformations of animated models – one for each bone in hierarchy • However, when storing keyframes, we can remove uneeded elements • E.g. no scaling – don’t store scaling • Will reduce the storage by 40% or so

8. Key Frames • Key frames authored by artists • Based on needs of animation • Must make sure it suits our needs too: • Rotations small enough for interpolation method (e.g. nlerp) • No unsupported components (e.g. shear) • All bones key-framed at once or independently • Might pre-process keyframes: • Precalculate values (e.g. sin θ) • Add extra frames to improve motion when using approximations

9. Interpolation Revisited • Choices with interpolation: • Use lerp or normalised lerp (nlerp) always • Or use slerp sometimes • Or use slerp approximations (sometimes) • First choice can be the best nlerp • Unless there are large angular movements in your animation (rare) • Less than 5% inaccurate for < 45 degrees

10. Higher Order Interpolation • We may wish to use more complex interpolations: • To produce smooth curves • Higher order interpolation needs less key frames • Up to ten times less • Only a little extra data • Overall greatly aids our memory problem • Example: cubic Bezier curve formula • Use as a replacement for linear interpolation • Needs extra points to define curve

11. Playing Animations • Each animation has a length • Usually measured in seconds • Within that time there will be several key frames • Around 0.5 to 8 per second - may not be evenly spread • Our model will know its current animation position • E.g. 1.2 seconds into an 2 second walk animation • Need a fast method to extract the which key frames are needed at this point • Need the frame before, the frame after and the interpolation value t

12. Playing Animations • For each animation store a single structure: • Number of bones in animation • Length (in seconds) • Key frame data • When a model plays an animation it stores an additional structure: • Pointer to the animation it is using • Current position (time) in the animation • Can be converted to key frames + t value • Speed of playback • This way several models can use the same animation at the same time

13. Blending Animations • Game characters often do several things at once: • E.g. Running and shooting • Many animations only use part of the body • E.g. A waving animation • Like to use different animations at the same time • And/or apply them only to parts of the body • Possible with further linear interpolation of several animations: • A first lerp to get pose 1, a second lerp to get pose 2 • Then a final lerp to blend these two together

14. Multiway Blending • Can add weightings to the animations: FinalPose = Pose1 * w1 + Pose2 * w2 • If w1>w2, then Pose1 is more prominent • Almost identical to quaternion and vector linear interpolation from last week • Can blend more than two animations too • This is called multiway blending • Uses: • Smoothly changing from a run to a walk • Different animations for legs and upper body • Separate facial animations • All of the above happening at the same time

15. Bone Masks • Can also have per-bone weights for blending animations - called a bone mask • For a waving animation, the bones in the arm would have a weight of 1.0 • The animation fully affects the arm • The rest of the body would have 0.0 • No effect on the body • Don’t need to store key frames for these parts • The shoulder would have a weight of 0.5 • Blending the waving animation with any underlying animation

16. Motion Extraction • A run animation actually moves the character in the scene – even if our model is stationary • How to match the motion stored in the animation and the position of our models? • Use motion extraction techniques, generally: • Analyse movement of a root bone in the animation • Subtract that motion from the animation – so the animation doesn’t move • Replicate the movement onto our actual scene model • The result will look the same, but with the scene model tracking the animation root

17. Animation Summary • Many aspects to a full animation system • A very intricate areas of games development • Only able to touch upon the issues in the time available here • Matrices, quaternions, interpolation are just the building blocks • Look at simple, but functional system in the labs • In the real world you will find more complex systems in use • But with the same principles