mocap for trees

Computer scientists at the University of Bath have developed a new way of making life-like animations of trees using video footage of the real thing. Not only does it create animation of the tree’s movement, but it also creates a 3d model from the same video footage. Um, holy crap!

Dr Peter Hall and Chris Li, of the University’s Department of Computer Science, have developed a program that will let the computer “watch” video footage of a tree to enable it to make computer-animations that mimic the way branches and leaves move in the wind.

Dr Hall explained: “Rendering trees has always been a headache for animators. Trees move in irregular ways, and it’s very hard to achieve natural-looking movement. “It is so expensive that traditional animation often uses static trees – except in big-budget films. In computer graphics, tree models are just as hard to produce. “With our system, the user can produce new trees of the same variety, with each one an individual. We can also very finely control the movement of the tree for different weather conditions, different seasons, and can even make it dance to music!”

Chris Li, who is developing this software as part of his PhD at Bath, said: “Our system will make it faster and cheaper for animators to create animated backgrounds. “In the future we want to use this same technique to animate other objects like clouds, water, fire and smoke.”