A group of graphics experts led by computer
scientists at Harvard have created an add-on software tool that translates
video game characters into fully articulated action figures, with the help of a
3D printer. Besides its obvious consumer appeal, the tool constitutes a
remarkable piece of code and an unusual conceptual exploration of the virtual
and physical worlds. In a virtual world, you have all this freedom that you
don't have in the physical world. You can make a character so anatomically
skewed that it would never be able to stand up in real life, and you can make
deformations that aren't physically possible. You could even have a head that
isn't attached to its body, or legs that occasionally intersect each other
instead of colliding.
Returning a virtual character to the physical
world therefore turns the traditional animation process on its head, in a sort
of reverse rendering, as the image that's on the screen must be adapted to
accommodate real-world constraints. Spore (an evolution-simulation video game)
allows players to create a vast range of creatures with numerous limbs, eyes,
and body segments in almost any configuration, using a technique called
procedural animation to quickly and automatically animate whatever body plan it
receives. As with most types of computer animation, the characters themselves
are just skins (meshes of polygons) that are manipulated like marionettes by an
invisible skeleton.
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