Computer Graphics

Chapter 12

Basics of animation

12.1   Coordinates interpolation

12.2   Orientation interpolation

12.3   Key-frame animation

12.4   Skeletal animation

12.5   Path following

Animation of objects (coming from the Latin word anima) deals usually with interpolation – we have positions and orientations given at several moments of time and we want to get new positions and orientations for an arbitrary moment of time.

This interpolation comes in two forms – coordinates (positions) interpolation and orientation interpolation.

12.1   Coordinates interpolation

For coordinates interpolation we have a set of known moments of time t₀, t₁, …, t_n−1 and for each such moment t_i we know a position p_i. The goal is to build a smooth curve p = p(t) such that ...