Interactive Skeleton Extraction Using Geodesic Distance

This paper proposes a method of extracting skeleton interactively for 3D character animation. A skeleton is automatically and interactively generated from the object data of 3D models in a process that consists of five steps: 1) transformation into a low polygon model from the original model composed of a large number of polygons; 2) calculation of the sum of the geodesic distance from specific points to all vertices on the 3D model; 3) subdivision of the 3D model using the sum of geodesic distances; 4) generation of skeleton joints (skeleton nodes) on each boundary surface between those subdivision areas; and 5) connection of all skeleton nodes. We also propose a method for flexible skeleton generation using boundary shapes and the sum of geodesic distances. After generating the skeleton, various animations can be created by interpolating key poses created from user manipulation of skeleton joints. Since skeletons can be generated with this method where specified by users, users are expected to create interactively flexible animations of 3D models.