How to train your dog: Neural enhancement of quadruped animations

Creating realistic quadruped animations is challenging. Producing realistic animations using methods such as key-framing is time consuming and requires much artistic expertise. Alternatively, motion capture methods have their own challenges (getting the animal into a studio, attaching motion capture markers, and getting the animal to put on the desired performance) and the resulting animation will still most likely require cleaning up. It would be useful if an animator could provide an initial rough animation and in return be given a corresponding high quality realistic one. To this end, we present a deep-learning approach for the automatic enhancement of quadruped animations. Given an initial animation, possibly lacking the subtle details of true quadruped motion and/or containing small errors, our results show that it is possible for a neural network to learn how to add these subtleties and correct errors to produce an enhanced animation while preserving the semantics and context of the initial animation. Our work also has potential uses in other applications, for example, its ability to be used in real-time means it could form part of a quadruped embodiment system.