Patent Application
20080303830
The invention relates to computer graphics and more particularly to computer character generation for use in animation.
Computer animation, the art of creating moving images via the use of computers, is a common form of audio-visual presentation, where the provided content ranges from television programming, television advertisements, feature movies, short films, cartoons, music videos, computer games and video games. Further these different forms of computer animation, traditionally presented to the user via a television or within the movie theatre are now presented with, and supported by, a multitude of electronic devices including personal computers (PCs), laptop computers, Personal Digital Assistant (PDA), video game consoles (consoles), handheld game consoles (handhelds), cellular telephones (cellphones), and portable multimedia players.
Economically, such computer animation in the form of physical and online sales represents a global business today of approximately $40 billion in 2006 and expected to grow to over $65 billion by 2010. The dominant segments of this market being computer animated feature films, computer games, console games and handheld games.
In addition to this significant global economic element of “entertainment oriented animation” there is an immense amount of animation generated by individuals and businesses for a wide variety of uses ranging from advertisements, education, etc. Whilst difficult to provide economics, an estimate of the quantity of such material may be estimated from quick searches using Yahoo and Google, within their specific video databases for animations. Such searches return 153,000 and 98,000 animated videos as of Jun. 5, 2007.
In computer animation, commercially available systems are essentially digital successors to the art of stop motion animation of 3D models and frame-by-frame animation of 2D illustrations. Some examples of current animation software include Amorphium®, Art of Illusion®, Poser®, Ray Dream Studio®, Bryce®, Maya®, Blender®, TrueSpace®, Lightwave®, 3D Studio Max®, SoftImage XSI®, Alice®, and Adobe Flash® (2D).
For 3D animations of characters, the characters are modeled on the computer monitor and 3D figures are rigged with a virtual skeleton. For 2D figure animations, separate illustrations and separate transparent layers are used, with or without a virtual skeleton. Then the limbs, eyes, mouth, clothes, etc. of the figure are moved by the animator on key frames. The differences in appearance between key frames are automatically calculated by the computer in a process known as tweening or morphing. Finally, the animation is rendered, the rendering providing the features of the skin, clothing, etc.
It would be apparent that within the thousands of different computer game titles and tens of thousands of different animated videos that a significant amount of work is expended in generating the virtual skeletons, providing the character models, and rendering the physical forms of the characters. Presently, this is typically done by specialised artists. This has a corresponding cost to a studio or animator in producing the audio-visual content with computer animation. These costs increase essentially linearly with the number of characters, as they are all generated individually, and with the degree of resolution applied in generating the models. For example, characters within background may be modelled and rendered at low resolution, whilst characters in foreground modelled and rendered at high resolution, particularly the main characters. The lower complexity of generating a wide variety of characters such as fantasy
Numerous other embodiments may be envisaged without departing from the spirit or scope of the invention. characters and cartoon-like humans influences the decisions that studios, animators and others make in generating their computer animation. Even so the costs of generating computer animated characters are significant and clearly evident when one considers that even animated films with fantasy characters and cartoon-like humans such as “Shark Tale”, “Toy Story 2”, “Incredibles” and “Finding Nemo” have production costs ranging from US$80 million to over US$100 million per motion picture.
Throughout the remainder of this document the term “avatar” is employed to refer to a computer animated character. Originating from video games, “avatars” are essentially a player's physical computer animated representation in the game world. Typically, a video game offers the player a single avatar or a predetermined limited set of avatars from which to select as the basis of their “player” within the game. As such these avatars have been generated typically in accordance with the process presented stipra in respect of skeletons, wire-frames, and rendering. Online games such as “Second Life” provide only 12 avatars for the user to select from, whilst video games such as “Alien Arena 2007” (COR Entertainment) offers 11 avatars for the player to base their player upon.
Recently, to reduce the complexity for animators in generating avatars for their audio-visual content, some commercial software suites offer the animator such a library of stock avatars to select from. One such leading commercial software suite being “iClone 2.0” from RealIllusion, which offers 15 base avatars for the animator to select from. Unfortunately, this is very limited.
It would therefore be beneficial to provide a way for an animator to rapidly generate an avatar and manipulate their characteristics. Further, rather than requiring the animator to always envision, provide a skeleton, wire frame and render their avatar completely it would be beneficial to provide a solution offering the animator the ability to start or select a relatively small number of input selections, and provide simple intuitive interfaces allowing them to focus their creative skills on the manipulation and refinement of the avatar, whilst offering them a wide range of potential outcomes.
The instant application hereby incorporates by reference the entire contents of U.S. Provisional Patent Application No. 60/929,055, filed on Jun. 11, 2007.
In accordance with an aspect of the invention there is provided a method comprising: providing at least two avatars, each one of the at least two avatars having a different simulated physical appearance that is defined in terms of a plurality of inheritable characteristics; providing a weighting factor for defining a relative contribution of at least one of the plurality of inheritable characteristics from each of the at least two avatars to a simulated physical appearance of an Off-Spring avatar, the weighting factor selected by a user; generating the Off-Spring avatar in dependence upon the plurality of inheritable characteristics of the at least two avatars and the weighting factor; providing an additional item for being associated with the Off-Spring avatar; modifying the Off-Spring avatar to form a new avatar, the new avatar formed by mapping the additional item onto the Off-Spring avatar; and storing the new avatar on a computer readable storage medium.
In accordance with an aspect of the invention there is provided a method comprising:
In accordance with an aspect of the invention there is provided a method comprising: providing a virtual environment, the virtual environment supporting a plurality of avatars associated with a plurality of users, each avatar having a plurality of physical characteristics; providing within the virtual environment an ability for at least two avatars of the plurality of avatars to have an Off-Spring avatar, the Off-Spring avatar generated in dependence upon the plurality of physical characteristics of the at least two avatars; providing an additional item for being associated with the Off-Spring avatar, the additional item being selected by at least one user associated with the at least two avatars; modifying the Off-Spring avatar to provide a modified Off-Spring avatar, the modified Off-Spring avatar generated by mapping the additional item onto the Off-Spring avatar, and, storing the modified Off-Spring avatar on a computer readable storage medium.
Exemplary embodiments of the invention will now be described in conjunction with the following drawings, in which:
Referring to
As shown in
With the proliferation of video games, computer games, animated films, etc. an organization generating such content may not wish to expend its resources, financial or physical, in generating avatars. As a result an aspect of the industry is the purchase of pre-designed avatars from an avatar-programmer, such as referred to in
“Girl Avatar” 220 as shown comprises clothed and completed models, similar to finished model 120 of
A developer of audio-visual content such as a video game or computer game comprising avatars, whether implementing avatars directly, such as discussed supra in respect of
When employing the three-generation inheritance based avatar generator 300 a user selects four grandparents from a pool 310 of avatar characters. In the three-generation inheritance based avatar generator 300 the avatar characters are “Lena” 311, “MugNa” 312, “Pepe” 313, “Steph” 314, “Todd” 315, and “Xua” 316. In the instant example the user has selected “Steph” 314 as paternal grandfather 320, “Lena” 311 as paternal grandmother 325, “MugNa” 312 as maternal grandfather 340, and “Xua” 316 as maternal grandmother 345. The terms maternal and paternal as employed within the embodiments are to differentiate the two sets of grandparents. As will be evident in respect of the embodiments the requirement for both sexes in the parents giving “birth” to the child within a software based inheritance based avatar generator is not necessarily a requirement, although optionally it may be set as one. The three-generation inheritance based avatar generator 300 therein generates the second generation comprising “Parent 1” 330, and “Parent 2” 350, and thereafter the third generation avatar “Off-Spring Head” 360 of “Parent 1” 330 and “Parent 2” 350. It would be apparent that three-generation inheritance based avatar generator 300 provides the user with an additional aspect of their game, if embedded within a game, allowing their avatar to be determined from a plurality of choices and inputs rather than a single click of a cursor over one image.
Optionally, introducing the three-generation inheritance based avatar generator 300 into an online virtual reality environment such as “Second Life” as discussed supra in respect of
Referring now to
Additional refinement of the avatar, once the grandparents and three sliders presented supra are defined, is possible via a feature selector bar 470 that is shown as comprising eight feature icons 471 through 478. The first feature icon being “Whole Head” 471, when selected provides the global avatar modifications as discussed supra in respect of
The three-generation inheritance based avatar generator of the exemplary embodiments presented in respect of
Also shown are “Body Slider” 578 and three body feature icons, “Head-Body Ratio” 572, “Scale Neck” 574, and “Height” 576. The avatar generator in selecting “Height” 576 can scale the whole body of “Off-Spring” 560 across the pre-determined range defined in conjunction with the “Body Slider” 578, for example from 0.4 m (approximately 16 inches) for an infant through to 2.4 m (approximately 7 feet 10 inches). Similarly, “Scale Neck” 574 allows the avatar generator to adjust the length of the neck of “Off-Spring” 560, and “Head-Body Ratio” 572.
Exemplary avatars generated when the avatar generator has selected “Head-Body Ratio” 572 and manipulated “Body Slider” 578 are shown in
Referring now to
Accordingly the avatar animator is provided with non-physical feature selector 715 which comprises a series of icons 715a through 715i relating to categories of non-physical features. As shown, the icons relate to clothing for a female avatar and are “Jacket” 715a, “Skirt” 715b, “Blouse” 715c, “Hat” 715d, “Trousers” 715e, “Dress” 715f, “Lingerie” 715g, “Bra” 715h, and “Shoes” 715i. Having selected “Trousers” 715e the option bar 710 displays all, or optionally a sub-set, of options. In this view of the three-generation inheritance based avatar generator 700 the option bar 710 displays “Jeans—Standard” 710a, “Curvy Low Rise” 710b, “Pants—Tight” 710c, and “Jeans—Boot Cut” 710d.
In selecting each category of non-physical features, from non-physical feature selector 715, and specific option, from option bar 710, the full body avatar 720 is re-displayed with the selected item. Importantly, the three-generation inheritance based avatar generator 700 automatically resizes and maps the selected item, such as Jeans-Standard” 710a to the full body torso (being full body avatar 720 without any additional features). In this manner an adjustment in the full body avatar 720 arising from a change in the multiple selections the avatar generator can make, including paternal grandparents 320 and 325, maternal grandparents 340 and 345, paternal grandparent weighting via paternal slider 410, maternal grandparent weighting via maternal slider 420, father-mother weighting via family weighting slide-bar 430, and the eight feature icons 471 through 478.
In this manner, as illustrated in
In this manner, according to at least an embodiment of the invention, the selection of non-physical features genuinely is a “one-size-fits-all” selection of clothing or other elements provided within the option bar 710 and routed through non-physical feature selector 715. Optionally, each non-physical feature may be provided with a palette change, as discussed supra in respect of the skin tone of the off-spring 460 using “Palette” 478 in respect of
In the embodiments of the invention presented supra the inheritance based avatar generation process has been presented in respect of a human procreation model with two parents for each off-spring and weighting applied between each pair of parents within each of the first and second generations giving rise to the third generation. Whilst the weightings applied have been discussed in respect of slider bars it would be apparent that alternative methods of user selection of the weighting are possible, including implementations of dials, knobs, etc and entry by the user of a percentage, ratio or other indicator.
Optionally, the inheritance based avatar generator may be implemented with N parents, wherein N>2, for each offspring, and a weighting Wm is provided by the user for all but one parent, i.e. providing N−1 weightings, where
The final weighting being automatically calculated. Alternatively the user may also be provided with a random weighting function, wherein a pseudo-random number generator provides the weightings for the current selection of parents. It would also be apparent that the avatar generator may select any combination of parents, and hence whilst the embodiments supra employ human, or humanoid, parents such a limitation is only for ease of presentation and understanding. No such limitation exists for the avatar generator other than the avatars within the pool have formats compatible with the inheritance based avatar generator process.
Further optionally, the inheritance based avatar generator supports inheritance of “recessive” characteristics. This is, essentially, another form of randomization. Thus, according to an aspect of the instant invention the “Random” 717 feature may be used to support toggling of the “recessive” characteristics on and off. For instance, at least some of the grandparent and/or parent avatars possess “recessive” characteristics within their definition. These are characteristics that typically are not visually apparent in the said avatar's simulated physical appearance, but which nevertheless are capable of being “passed on” to subsequent generations of avatars. When two avatars having such “recessive” characteristics are combined, then there is a statistically determined probability that the resulting Off-Spring avatar will express the characteristic in its simulated physical appearance. For instance, the Off-Spring avatar may be unexpectedly a red-head, even though none of the ancestor avatars has red hair. Of course, should the user decide to disable “recessive” characteristics using, for instance, the “Random” 717 feature, then the same avatar would instead have hair color that is determined as a weighted average of the hair color of the ancestor avatars, as described supra.
When “recessive” characteristics are enabled, then at least two avatars of an available pool of avatars have at least one physical characteristic that includes a “recessive variant.” Optionally, the “recessive variant” is the same for each of the at least two avatars, such than any Off-Spring thereof expresses the “recessive variant,” without any weighting to favor any of the at least two avatars. Further optionally, each of the at least two avatars has a uniquely defined “recessive variant.” For instance, continuing the red head example, the “recessive variant” for one of the at least two avatars results in dark auburn hair and the “recessive variant” for the other of the at least two avatars results in bright red hair. The user optionally uses a weighting bar to favor the “recessive variant” of one of the at least two avatars, thereby selecting a hair color intermediate dark auburn and bright red.
Off-Spring avatars, which are generated using an avatar generator according to an embodiment of the instant invention, may be used to “populate” interactive or non-interactive applications, such as for instance video and computer games, on-line virtual environments for social networking or dating, movies, advertisements, etc. In the case of on-line gaming and on-line virtual environments, optionally the avatar generator is hosted on a computer system that is remote from the user, or the avatar generator is downloaded to a computer system that is local to the user. For instance, the avatar generator may be downloaded as part of the initial software download by a new user upon joining an on-line virtual environment or on-line gaming community. The parameters that define the generated Off-Spring avatar may be transferred from the user's local computer system to the local computer systems of other users that interact with the user within the virtual environment. Software that is installed on the local computer systems of the other users then generates a representation of the Off-Spring avatar, based on the parameters received from the user.
This application claims the benefit of U.S. Provisional Application No. 60/929,055 filed on Jun. 11, 2007, the entire content of which is incorporated herein by reference.
| Number | Date | Country | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 60929055 | Jun 2007 | US |
