Contact Skinning

In this paper, we propose a new approach to model interactions through a skinning method. Skinning is a frequently used technique to animate a mesh based on skeleton motion. In the case of a hand motion sequence used to manipulate and grasp virtual objects, it is essential to accurately represent the contact between the virtual objects and the animated hand. To improve the level of realism, our approach allows to solve accurately friction contact laws. In addition, contact constraints defined on the surface of the hand can be applied onto the skeleton to produce plausible motion. We illustrate our work through two examples: the real-time simulation of a grasping task and a character animation based on motion capture. 1. Introduction In computer animation and virtual reality, reproduction of human interactions with the environment is often a target. Motion capture or data gloves provides a simple way to produce realistic motions on animation characters and interactions with a virtual environment. For simplicity, the body (or some part of the body, like the hand) is modeled using an articulated skeleton. The resulting degrees of freedom to be tracked during the motion and to be animated is reduced to the minimum. Then skinning method [Blo02] allows to apply these motions to a surrounded deformable mesh, which is the skin of the body.