Andy Nealen | New York University (original) (raw)

Papers by Andy Nealen

We introduce AniMesh, a system that supports interleaved modeling and animation creation and edit... more We introduce AniMesh, a system that supports interleaved modeling and animation creation and editing. AniMesh is suitable for rapid prototyping and easily accessible to non-experts. Source animations can be obtained from commodity motion capture devices or by adapting canned motion sequences. We propose skeleton abstraction and motion retargeting algorithms for finding correspondences and transferring motion between skeletons, or portions of skeletons, with varied topology. Motion can be copied-and-pasted between kinematic chains with different skeletal topologies, and entire model parts can be cut and reattached, while always retaining plausible, composite animations.

ACM Transactions on Graphics, 2012

Abstract The creation of a 3D model is only the first stage of the 3D character animation pipelin... more Abstract The creation of a 3D model is only the first stage of the 3D character animation pipeline. Once a model has been created, and before it can be animated, it must be rigged. Manual rigging is laborious, and automatic rigging approaches are far from real-time and do not allow for incremental updates. This is a hindrance in the real world, where the shape of a model is often revised after rigging has been performed.

Abstract We present an automatic method that can be used to abstract high resolution images into ... more Abstract We present an automatic method that can be used to abstract high resolution images into very low resolution outputs with reduced color palettes in the style of pixel art. Our method simultaneously solves for a mapping of features and a reduced palette needed to construct the output image. The results are an approximation to the results generated by pixel artists. We compare our method against the results of a naive process common to image manipulation programs, as well as the hand-crafted work of pixel artists.

The question of what are good views of a 3D object has been addressed by numerous researchers in ... more The question of what are good views of a 3D object has been addressed by numerous researchers in perception, computer vision and computer graphics. This has led to a large variety of measures for the goodness of views as well as some special-case viewpoint selection algorithms. In this paper, we leverage the results of a large user study to optimize the parameters of a general model for viewpoint goodness, such that the ﬁtted model can predict people’s preferred views for a broad range of objects. Our model is represented as a combination of attributes known to be important for view selection, such as projected model area and silhouette length. Moreover, this framework can easily incorporate new attributes in the future, based on the data from our existing study. We demonstrate our combined goodness measure in a number of applications, such as automatically selecting a good set of representative views, optimizing camera orbits to pass through good views and avoid bad views, and trackball controls that gently guide the viewer towards better views.

In this paper, we describe a design methodology that we have termed Minimalist Game Design. Minim... more In this paper, we describe a design methodology that we have termed Minimalist Game Design. Minimalist games have small rulesets, narrow decision spaces, and abstract audiovisual representations, yet they do not compromise on depth of play or possibility space. We begin with a motivation for and de nition of minimalist games, including terms such as "rules," "mechanics," "control," and "interface," and illustrate the importance of arti cial design constraints. Using a number of examples, we show the strengths of minimalist game elements in systems, controls, visuals, and audio. Adhering to these constraints, these games feature a small set of mechanics and one core mechanic, while still being suf ciently deep and allowing for player exploration and performance. This depth comes from procedural methods, combinatorial complexity, probability, obfuscation, challenge, or any combination thereof. Our methodology embraces principles of holistic design, where there is no " ller," and where every element of the game contributes to the play experience in some meaningful, deliberate way.

Proceedings of the …, Jan 1, 2004

Physically based deformable models have been widely embraced by the Computer Graphics community. ... more Physically based deformable models have been widely embraced by the Computer Graphics community. Many problems outlined in a previous survey by Gibson and Mirtich [GM97] have been addressed, thereby making these models interesting and useful for both offline and ...

Submitted for publication, Jan 1, 2006

ACM SIGGRAPH 2007 …, Jan 1, 2007

Advances in Computer Graphics and Computer …, Jan 1, 2007

… of the 14th Eurographics workshop on …, Jan 1, 2003

Proceedings of the 4th …, Jan 1, 2006

High quality labeled data is essential for developing and evaluating sketch recognition algorithm... more High quality labeled data is essential for developing and evaluating sketch recognition algorithms. Unfortunately, labeling freely-drawn sketches is time-consuming and difficult, if not impossible, using current technologies. These difficulties and the resulting lack of labeled ...

ACM Transactions on …, Jan 1, 2007

Abstract This paper presents a system for designing freeform surfaces with a collection of 3D cur... more Abstract This paper presents a system for designing freeform surfaces with a collection of 3D curves. The user first creates a rough 3D model by using a sketching interface. Unlike previous sketching systems, the user-drawn strokes stay on the model surface and serve as handles for controlling the geometry. The user can add, remove, and deform these control curves easily, as if working with a 2D line drawing. The curves can have arbitrary topology; they need not be connected to each other. For a given set of curves, the system ...