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MuscleBuilder: A modeling tool for human anatomy

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Abstract

A traditional multi-layered approach is adopted to human body modeling and deformation. The model is split into three general anatomical structures: the skeleton, musculature and skin. It is shown that each of these layers is modeled and deformed by using fast, procedural, ad-hoc methods that can painlessly be reimplemented. The modeling approach is generic enough to handle muscles of varying shape, size and characteristics and does not break in extreme skeleton poses. It is also described that the integrated MuscleBuilder system whose main features are: i) easy and quick creation of muscle deformation models; ii) automatic deformation of an overlying skin. It is shown that visually realistic results can be obtained at interactive frame rates with very little input from the designer.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Dream Works Animation, 1000 Flower Street, 91201, Glendale, CA, USA

    Amaury Aubel

  2. EPFL-VRlab, CH1015, Lausanne, Switzerland

    Daniel Thalmann

Authors
  1. Amaury Aubel
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  2. Daniel Thalmann
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Correspondence to Amaury Aubel.

Additional information

Regular Paper

Work done at EPFL VRlab.

This research has been partially sponsored by the Swiss National Research Foundation.

Amaury Aubel is currently employed as an FX developer with Dream Works Animation, where he works on character deformation tools and crowd simulation systems for two upcoming animated feature films. He holds a doctorate es Science from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne) and a software engineering diploma from the Institut d'Informatique d'Entreprise (France). His research interests include geometric deformation, 3D character modeling and animation, motion planning and crowd simulation.

Daniel Thalmann is a professor and director of the Virtual Reality Lab (VRlab) at EPFL, Switzerland. He is a pioneer in research on Virtual Humans. He is coeditor-in-chief of the Journal “Computer Animation and Virtual Worlds”, and member of the editorial board of the Visual Computer and 3 other journals. Daniel Thalmann was Program Chair of several conferences including IEEE VR 2000. He has also organized 5 courses at SIGGRAPH on human animation and crowd animation. He has published numerous papers and is coeditor of 30 books including the recent Handbook of Virtual Humans, and coauthor of several books. He received his Ph.D. degree in computer science in 1977 from the University of Geneva and an Honorary Doctorate (Honoris Causa) from University Paul-Sabatier in Toulouse, France, in 2003.

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Aubel, A., Thalmann, D. MuscleBuilder: A modeling tool for human anatomy. J. Comput. Sci. & Technol. 19, 585–595 (2004). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02945584

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