Breathing Life into Shapes

Shape articulation transforms a lifeless geometric object into a vibrant character. Computers enrich artists´ toolsets dramatically. They not only endow artists with the power to manipulate virtual 2D and 3D scenes, but they also eliminate tedium and expedite prototyping, freeing artists to focus on creative aspects. With such power comes a temptation to lean entirely on the computer. Computationally intensive animation systems sacrifice real-time feedback for physical accuracy. How can we leverage modern computational power to create the best possible shape deformations while maintaining real-time performance as a mandatory invariant? This article summarizes efforts to answer this, culminating in a deformation system with the quality of slow, nonlinear optimization, but at lightning speed.