UCLA Adds Physics to Prat-falls

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.""

Comments

This is lame by comparison

[Dan D.]

This guy http://www.q12.org/phd-movies.html did a physical body *and* made it walk with artificial controls. (And he's developed a library for the physics called ODE which makes doing a body falling down stairs about a days work, maybe half.)

Not just normal physics, either

[texchanchan]

You could get into the program and change a variable or two and have your characters looking like they really are on a high-gravity or low-gravity planet, or in the viscous atmosphere of Jupiter, or whatever you like! I'm looking forward to it.

saw it

[spookysuicide]

I saw a sneak of the time machine and I distinctly remember the skeleton crumbling scene they talk about in this article.

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"?

This could be useful...

[ShooterNeo]

Well, the trouble with using it to replace stuntmen has as much to do with the realism of actual footage of an event vs a cgi simulation of one.

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:Really?

[rhekman]

No, not really. Game engine physics are purposefully incomplete for reasons of performance and gameplay.

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. The problem is applying that technology for character models.

Regards

Sound too good to be true.

[eddy]

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).

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?