Real-time Deformation with Coupled Cages and Skeletons

Real-time character deformation is an essential topic in Computer Animation. Deformations can be achieved by using several techniques, but the skeleton-based ones are the most popular. Skeletons allow artists to deform articulated parts of the digital characters by moving their bones. Other techniques, like cage-based ones, are gaining popularity but struggle to be included in animation workflows because they require to change the animation pipeline substantially. This thesis formalizes a technique that allows animators to embed cage-based deformations in standard skeleton-based pipelines. The described skeleton/cage hybrid allows artists to enrich the expressive powers of the skeletons with the degrees of freedom offered by cages. Furthermore, this thesis describes two Graphical User Interfaces dedicated to deformations and animations. The first one, CageLab, allows artists to define cage-based deformations and perform cage editing. The second one, SuperCages GUI, allows artists to author animations and deformations by using the skeleton/cage hybrid described earlier.