1. CmpE 195A Project Kinematics Tool Project Description By:
Dr. Mohamed Fayad & Huáscar Sánchez

2. Does your Team have these qualities?.....
Team Requirements
The team or students designated for this project must have the following qualities:
Experience on Java/Java3D Programming
Understanding of Graphics Theory
GUI Programming (Java Swing)
Analysis and Design Knowledge
Research Experience
And Team Oriented..
Does your Team have these qualities?.....

3. Available Resources
Research Papers about this topic will be posted on Dr. Fayad’s Website.
Sample Code, and any related material will be also available on Dr. Fayad’s Website.
To make this work very iterative, team members are welcome to share their findings to be posted on Dr Fayad’s website.

4. Current Concerns in the Area
Reduce the required time for making a Character/Object Move .
Necessity of better GUIs to represent complex Kinematics Object Animation .
Better Integration with other Animation Techniques.
Construction of Application-Independent Controllers handle different aspects of Kinematics for Object Animation.
Better methods to create Kinematics Chains or Armatures from the elementary building blocks of rigid bodies and joints (“Pivots”).
Provide to the user with easy to use, and graphically supported method calls for consistent Armatures Creation and Communication.
Alternatives
Did you know that:
Kinematics is also use in Artificial Intelligence, Robotics, Physics and Simulation?

5. What is Kinematics?
In order to describe what Kinematics is, we need to define first two of its elementary elements.
Forward Kinematics: Forward-kinematics is the process that specifies, within the building blocks of a rigid Body, all joint motions, so we are able to determine the position of the free end of a chain within a particular building block (i.e. end - effector)[1].
Inverse Kinematics: Determines the position and orientation of all joints (“pivots of particular blocks”) in the hierarchy given an end-effector state [1].
References:
[1] Thanh Giang, Robert Mooney, Christopher Peters, Carol O'Sullivan,
Real Time Character Techniques, Image Synthesis Group Trinity College Dublin.

6. So, What is Kinematics?
Kinematics: It is that branch of mechanics that describes the motions of bodies without considering the forces required to produce and maintain the motion [2].
“Kinematics describes the motion of objects in equilibrium.”
References:
[2] Topics in Computer Animation,

7. Project Description
The main goal of this project is to develop a tool for character animation, focusing of the most common technique for character animation: Kinematics. This technique should be included as the main feature to animate your characters (i.e. using forward and backward kinematics).
Provide to any artist and any other common user the enough flexibility to express his/her unlimited imagination into a well-defined/detailed 3D digital representation of a character and/or environment.
For this project, the captured subject can be anything that exists either in the real world or our imagination, with the key points positioned on the subject/character such that they will accurately represent the distinct orientations of the moving parts of that particular subject (i.e. pivot points).
For this Project we will use Java/Java3D Programming Language and UML.

8. Project Description- Continuation
This project will consist on several deliveries with specific deadlines. These deadlines will be stipulated by the class instructor and/or the project advisor.
Remember, stable tool for character animation should cover in detailed and how Kinematics is applied for character animation (i.e. inverse, forward kinematics, etc.).
The selected team for this project will be working with a moderator/project advisor who will help you to understand and get clarified about minor doubts on the project development.
At the end of the course, the selected teams for this project must merge all the submitted documents into one whole document (including snapshots of the tool, some samples of the source code). Also, the team must submit a copy of the developed tool (CD) and be ready to show the working tool.
C.A.T. Possible Process Flow
Information – Domain Knowledge

9. Thank You! Who is interested? Any Question?
Please let me know if any Team is interested in this project.
Thank You!