Visualising Emotions within Computer Graphics
Computer Animation influences all areas of our every day life. Since the 1990?s commercial Speech recognition systems have been available off the shelf, but it has not been until the last few years that systems can now boast up to 99% accuracy (Dragon NaturallySpeaking? Pro V8 Program). This has greatly expanded the market of such systems and challenged companies to push the technology further. The majority of this extended research has been emotion recognition. This report will explore speech and emotion recognition and will look into methods of extracting basic meaningful data from sound files, with the use of Houdini, and expressing their content visually through colour and shape.
Procedural Trail Tool
Trail effects and motion blur take time to set up and compute. This process can be sped up by combining all the necessary operations in a tool. The user can mix and map different parameters to create their own trail rather than sticking with some more conventional trail visuals. Points (particles), curves, patches and blob meshes can be generated as output. Using ramps and forces allows drastically different results which gives the user more creative freedom.
Digital Puppetry
For this project, I wish to investigate my theory that a digital puppet can be used as a motion capture device. I intend to compare this idea against the standard methods that have been used in the animation industry to record the movements od actors. Hopefully, by the end of the project I will have created a puppet device that demonstrates how this theory can be put into practice.