The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document.
The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge covers the following: Patent number, Date patent was issued, Date patent was filed, Title of the patent, Applicant, Inventor, Assignee, Attorney firm, Primary examiner, Assistant examiner, CPCs, and Abstract. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document (in Adobe Acrobat format, aka pdf). To download or print any patent click here.
Patent No.:
Date of Patent:
Jan. 11, 2000
Filed:
Oct. 07, 1997
Yves Boucher, Terrebonne, CA;
Avid Technology, Inc., Tewksbury, MA (US);
Abstract
A system and method for defining and employing behaviours for articulated chains in computer animations. At least one control, such as a shape control or a resolution plane control, is defined for the articulated chain and is employed as a constraint by the animation engine when animating the chain with inverse kinematics. Each control comprises two or more keys, each key comprising a couple of an effector direction vector and an associated constraint. In the case of shape control keys, the associated constraints comprise a list of preferred limb orientations and in the case of resolution plane control keys, the associated constraints comprise a preferred orientation for the resolution plane. For any given goal, selected control keys are interpolated with appropriate weightings to obtain a resulting constraint to be employed by the animation engine.