Computing the duration of motion transitions: an empirical approach

This paper develops methods for determining a visually appealing length for a motion transition, i.e., a segue between two sequences of character animation. Motion transitions are an important component in generating compelling animation streams in virtual environments and computer games. For reasons of efficiency and speed, linear interpolation is often used as the transition method, where the motion is blended between specified start and end frames. The blend length of a transition using this technique is critical to the visual appearance of the motion. Two methods for determining an optimal blend length for such transitions are presented. These methods are suited to different types of motion. They are empirically evaluated through user studies. For the motions tested, we find (1) that visually pleasing transitions can be generated using our optimal blend lengths without further tuning of the blending parameters; and (2), that users prefer these methods over a generic fixed-length blend.