Soundtracks for Computer Animation: Sound Rendering in Dynamic Environment with Occlusions

With the development of virtual reality systems and multi-modal simulations, soundtrack generation is becoming an important issue in computer graphics. In the context of computer generated animation, many more parameters than the sole object geometry as well as specific events can be used to generate, control and render a soundtrack that fits the object motions. Producing a convincing soundtrack involves the rendering of the interactions of sound with the dynamic environment : in particular sound reflections and sound absorption due to partial occlusions, usually implying an unacceptable computational cost. We present an integrated approach to sound and image rendering in a computer animation context, which allows the animator to recreate the process of sound recording, while ``physical effects" are automatically computed. Moreover, our sound rendering process efficiently combines a sound reflection model and an attenuation model due to scattering/diffraction by partial occluders, through the use of graphics hardware allowing interactive computation rates.

[1]  M. Barron.  The subjective effects of first reflections in concert halls—The need for lateral reflections , 1971 .

[2]  Henrik Møller.  Fundamentals of binaural technology , 1991 .

[3]  Tapio Takala,et al.  An integrated approach to motion and sound , 1995, Comput. Animat. Virtual Worlds.

[4]  Matti Karjalainen,et al.  Virtual Instruments in Virtual ooms - A Real-Time Binaural Room Simulation Environment for Physical Models of Musical Instruments , 1994, ICMC.

[5]  James K. Hahn,et al.  Integrating Sounds and Motions in Virtual Environments , 1998, Presence.

[6]  John M. Chowning,et al.  THE SIMULATION OF MOVING SOUND SOURCES , 1970 .

[7]  Daniel Thalmann,et al.  Synthetic Vision and Audition for Digital Actors , 1995, Comput. Graph. Forum.

[8]  David Stanley Mcgrath,et al.  Convolution Processing for Realistic Reverberation , 1995 .

[9]  J. Blauert.  Spatial Hearing: The Psychophysics of Human Sound Localization , 1983 .

[10]  Jean-Marc Jot,et al.  An analysis/synthesis approach to real-time artificial reverberation , 1992, [Proceedings] ICASSP-92: 1992 IEEE International Conference on Acoustics, Speech, and Signal Processing.

[11]  Durand R. Begault,et al.  Challenges to the Successful Implementation of 3-D Sound , 1991 .

[12]  Robert Taylor,et al.  Disney's Aladdin: first steps toward storytelling in virtual reality , 1996, SIGGRAPH.

[13]  Tapio Takala,et al.  Sound rendering , 1992, SIGGRAPH.

[14]  Francis Rumsey,et al.  Sound and recording: An introduction , 1992 .

[15]  Rodolphe Vauzelle.  Un modèle de diffraction en 3D dans le premier ellipsoi͏̈de de Fresnel , 1994 .

[16]  Durand R. Begault,et al.  3-D Sound for Virtual Reality and Multimedia Cambridge , 1994 .

[17]  Ann P. Dowling,et al.  Sound and Sources of Sound , 1983 .

[18]  Mendel Kleiner,et al.  Auralization-An Overview , 1993 .

[19]  S. Schwerman,et al.  The Physics of Musical Instruments , 1991 .

[20]  Marc Emerit.  Simulation binaurale de l'acoustique de salles de concert , 1995 .

[21]  D. V. Maercke,et al.  Binaural simulation of concert halls: A new approach for the binaural reverberation process , 1993 .

[22]  Bill Gardner,et al.  HRTF Measurements of a KEMAR Dummy-Head Microphone , 1994 .