Character modeling and animation

Character lines, skeletons, deformations, muscles, skin... the art of character setup leaves an animator unencumbered,  like a puppeteer, to focus on the formidable task of bringing a character to life.

 

Faces 

Expressive Facial Modeling and Animation (Keynote ACM Symposium on Computer Animation SCA 2024)

Facial Modeling and Animation (Keynote ACM Motion in Games 2019)

jali Research is a start-up focused on audio-driven tools for expressive animated storytelling.

s3conversationalgaze S3: Speech, Script and Scene driven Head and Eye Animation
Yifang Pan, Rishabh Agrawal, Karan Singh
ACM Transactions on Graphics (TOG), presented at SIGGRAPH 2024
Paper Project
faces Animatomy: an Animator-centric, Anatomically Inspired System for 3D Facial Modeling, Animation and Transfer
Byungkuk Choi, Haekwang Eom, Benjamin Mouscadet, Stephen Cullingford, Kurt Ma, Stefanie Gassel, Suzi Kim, Andrew Moffat, Millicent Maier, Marco Revelant, Joe Letteri, Karan Singh
ACM SIGGRAPH Asia 2022
Paper Project page
muscles VOCAL: Vowel and Consonant Layering for Expressive Animator-Centric Singing Animation
Yifang Pan, Chris Landreth, Eugene Fiume and Karan Singh
ACM SIGGRAPH Asia 2022
Paper Project page
muscles Optimizing UI Layouts for Deformable Face-Rig Manipulation
Joonho Kim and Karan Singh
ACM SIGGRAPH 2021
Paper Project page
muscles Interactive Modelling of Volumetric Musculoskeletal Anatomy
Rinat Abdrashitov, Seungbae Bang, David I.W. Levin, Karan Singh, Alec Jacobson
ACM SIGGRAPH 2021
Project Page
facemanifold Interactive Exploration and Refinement of Facial Expression using Manifold Learning.
Rinat Abdrashitov, Fanny Chevalier, Karan Singh
ACM UIST 2020. Paper | Video | Project

jali JALI-Driven Expressive Facial Animation and Multi-lingual Speech in Cyberpunk 2077.
P. Edwards, C. Landreth, R. Malinowski, M. Poplawski, E. Fiume, S. Watling, K.Singh
ACM SIGGRAPH 2020
Presentation page

fstop A System for Efficient 3D Printed Stop-Motion Face Animation
Rinat Abdrashitov, Alec Jacobson, Karan Singh
ACM Transactions on Graphics 2020 (SIGGRAPH 2020)
Paper | Paper (low res) | Project Page
chi_vr_draw Visemenet: audio-driven animator-centric speech animation
Zhan Xu, Yang Zhou, Evangelos Kalogerakis, Karan Singh ACM SIGGRAPH 2018. [Paper] [Video]
jali JALI: An Animator-Centric Viseme Model for Expressive Lip-Synchronization
Pif Edwards, Chris Landreth, Eugene Fiume, Karan Singh
ACM Transactions on Graphics, SIGGRAPH 2016
[PDF][Video][Details]
jali Wires: A geometric deformation technique
Karan Singh, Eugene Fiume
(ACM SIGGRAPH 98) [Paper] [Video]
jali
Image Copyright: Chris Landreth and JALI Research Inc.

 

Bodies

spacetime Face Extrusion Quad Meshes
Karran Pandey, J. Andreas Bærentzen, Karan Singh
ACM SIGGRAPH 2022
Paper Project
rignet RigNet: Neural Rigging for Articulated Characters.
Zhan Xu, Yang Zhou, Evangelos Kalogerakis, Chris Landreth, Karan Singh ACM Transactions on Graphics, Vol. 39, 2020 (SIGGRAPH 2020)
Paper, Video, Project Page (code, data and more)
biomotionedit Predicting Animation Skeletons for 3D Articulated Models via Volumetric Nets.
Zhan Xu, Yang Zhou, Evangelos Kalogerakis, Karan Singh
Proc. of the International Conference on 3D Vision (3DV) 2019.  (Oral Pres.)
Paper | Project Page (code, data and more)
ikd Inverse Kinodynamics: Editing and Constraining Kinematic Approximations of Dynamic Motion.
Cyrus Rahgoshay, Amir Rabbani, Karan Singh, Paul Kry.
Graphics Interface 2012, (Best Paper Award)
Paper | Video | Project
fw Finger Walking: Motion Editing with Contact-Based Hand Performance.
Noah Lockwood, Karan Singh
ACM/EG SCA 2012 Paper | Video | Project
segment Learning 3D Mesh Segmentation and Labeling.
E. Kalogerakis, A. Hertzmann, K. Singh
ACM Transactions on Graphics, Vol. 29, No. 3, July SIGGRAPH 2010. Paper | Project
biomotionedit Biomechanically-Inspired Motion Path Editing.
Noah Lockwood, Karan Singh.
ACM/EG SCA 2011 Paper | Video | Project
staggered Staggered Poses: A Character Motion Representation for Detail-Preserving Editing of Pose and Coordinated Timing.
P. Coleman, J. Bibliowicz, K. Singh, M. Gleicher.
ACM/EG SCA 2008.
Project | Paper | Video
feedback Kinodynamic skinning using volume-preserving deformations
Alexis Angelidis, Karan Singh
ACM/EG SCA 2007 Paper | Video Best Paper award.
feedback Predictive Feedback for Interactive Control of Physics-based Characters
J. Laszlo, M. Neff, K. Singh
Eurographics 2005 Paper | Video
out in rig Outside-In Anatomy Based Character Rigging
ichael Pratscher, Patrick Coleman, Joe Laszlo, and Karan Singh
ACM/EG SCA 2005 Paper | Video | Project
helping hand Helping Hand: An Anatomically Accurate Inverse Dynamics Solution For Unconstrained Hand Motion
W. Tsang, E. Fume, K. Singh 
ACM/EG SCA 05 Paper | Video
nfb ryan Ryan
National Film Board of Canada
Oscar Animated Short 2004.

jali Layered Dynamic Control for Interactive Character Swimming
P. Yang, J. Laszlo, K. Singh
ACM/EG SCA 2004.  Paper | Video | Project
handrix Handrix: Animating the Human Hand (pp 110-119 SCA 03)
George ElKoura, Karan Singh
ACM/EG SCA 2003.
Skinning Characters using Surface Oriented Free-Form Deformations
Karan Singh, Vangelis Kokkevis (GI 00).
Bingo Genie, SIGGRAPH ET award 1998
vistel Realistic Human Figure Synthesis and Animation for Virtual Reality Applications
Karan Singh (Ph.D. Dissertation, OSU 95).
vistel Human Figure Synthesis and Animation for Virtual Space Teleconferencing
K. Singh, J. Ohya, R. Parent.
IEEE VRAIS 1995, 118-126.

jali
Graphics Interface 2000 cover. Wrap Deformer (image: Paul Thuriot).