3D model-based curve generation and manipulation

Curves and lines are fundamental elements in animation sketches. To sketch an animation sequence manually would be a very laborious task. Also to enable these curves and lines to be manipulated efficiently would be very important for productivity. Here we propose a 3D model-based approach for generating 2D and 3D curves from a 3D animation sequence. We introduce an automatic method to extract 3D and 2D feature curves from the 3D animation through curve tracing, matching and evolving. All the 3D and 2D curves extracted are spatially and temporally coherent. Moreover, the geometrical relationship between the 2D and 3D curves are established. The curves are processed and vectorized to allow artists to intuitively edit and author the animation by manipulating the 3D and 2D features. By using distinct points on the feature curves as basis, we apply the radial basis function to deform the entire geometry of the animated model across the entire sequence. The result showed that our method has promising potential to make the animation process to be more time efficient.