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1.INTRODUCTION

Computer animation has long been an integral part of the simulation, motion picture, television

and consumer entertainment industries and promises to play a much greater role in the future.

As

it becomes more pervasive, improved techniques will be needed to simplify and speed up the

process of creating convincing, high quality animations. One key area of interest is the generation

of motion for various types of creatures and characters to be used in an animation.

These

creatures are the actors of the computer graphics world.

The way they move and interact with

their environment has a great effect on a viewer's perception of the animation, whether it appears

intentionally cartoon-like, or as an integral part of a realistic scene.

In the quest for tools to

generate realistic motion, one of the key directions of research has been the use of physically-

based animation.

This thesis presents an approach to the generation of bipedal locomotion for

computer animations using physics-based simulations.

There are essentially two basic models used in the generation of motion forthe purpose of

animating articulated figures:

kinematic models and dynamic models.

The

following

brief

overview of these approaches is useful for placing

appropriate context.

the

research

topic

of

this

thesis

in

an

1. 1

Kinematic Approaches

The most straightforward method for character animation is kinematicin nature.

Kinematic

animation is concerned only with the specification of joint angles and angular velocities over time.

It does not deal with the forces and torques acting on or within a creature or their effect on the

creature's motion.