Position based skinning of skeleton-driven deformable characters

Abstract

This paper presents a real-time skinning technique for character animation based on a two-layered deformation model. For each frame, the skin of a generic character is first deformed by using a classic linear blend skinning approach, then the vertex positions are adjusted according to a Position Based Dynamics schema. We define geometric constraints which mimic the flesh behavior and produce interesting effects like volume conservation and secondary animations, in particular passive jiggling behavior, without relying on a predefined training set of poses. Once the whole model is defined, the character animation is synthesized in real-time without suffering of the inherent artefacts of classic interactive skinning techniques, such as the "candy-wrapper" effect or undesired skin bulging.