Capture and synthesis of insect motion

We present an integrated system that enables the capture and synthesis of 3D motions of small scale dynamic creatures, typically insects and arachnids, in order to drive computer generated models. The system consists of a number of stages, initially, the acquisition of a multi-view calibration scene and synchronised video footage of a subject performing some action is carried out. A user guided labelling process, that can be semi-automated using tracking techniques and a 3D point generating algorithm, then enables a full metric calibration and captures the motions of specific points on the subject. The 3D motions extracted, which often come from a limited number of frames of the original footage, are then extended to generate potentially infinitely long, characteristic motion sequences for multiple similar subjects. Finally a novel path following algorithm is used to find optimal path along with coherent motion for synthetic subjects. The result is a system that, from a potentially small number of original multi-view frames, can generate a whole 'swarm' of novel synthetic subjects all moving in a coherent and natural manner. The proposed system has two major advantages over existing systems, 1) that traditional motion capture techniques cannot in general be used for very small subjects and 2) minimal expense and user input is required to generate, complex, high quality, CG animation.