Towards expressive animation - Combining realism and control ?

A final question to be asked, as a conclusion to this teaching cycle, is: "How can we generalize intuitive modeling methods (such as those relying on drawing or sculpting metaphors) to the case of creating animations?" This lecture presented some recent advances in this direction, first with regard to the creation of simple movements - periodic as in certain crowd models, or stationary as in the case of stunts - then more complex such as the free movements of characters. A solution for marrying realism and control was presented in the case of stunt scene design, where consistency constraints are guaranteed and details managed automatically, while still offering a good level of control. Techniques inspired by animation sketches, such as the action line or the space-time curve, offer attractive solutions in the case of characters. The remaining challenges were identified in conclusion.