Skinning with dual quaternions
Trinity College, Dublin and Czech Technical University in Prague
In I3D ’07: Proceedings of the 2007 symposium on Interactive 3D graphics and games (2007), pp. 39-46
@conference{kavan2007skinning,
title={Skinning with dual quaternions},
author={Kavan, L. and Collins, S. and {v{Z}}{‘a}ra, J. and O’Sullivan, C.},
booktitle={Proceedings of the 2007 symposium on Interactive 3D graphics and games},
pages={39–46},
year={2007},
organization={ACM}
}
Skinning of skeletally deformable models is extensively used for real-time animation of characters, creatures and similar objects. The standard solution, linear blend skinning, has some serious drawbacks that require artist intervention. Therefore, a number of alternatives have been proposed in recent years. All of them successfully combat some of the artifacts, but none challenge the simplicity and efficiency of linear blend skinning. As a result, linear blend skinning is still the number one choice for the majority of developers. In this paper, we present a novel GPU-friendly skinning algorithm based on dual quaternions. We show that this approach solves the artifacts of linear blend skinning at minimal additional cost. Upgrading an existing animation system (e.g., in a videogame) from linear to dual quaternion skinning is very easy and has negligible impact on run-time performance.
December 6, 2010 by hgpu