Karan Singh

Computer graphics is rapidly striding towards a state where real and virtual aspects of an animation are indistinguishable and blend seamlessly together. This is in no small measure due to advancements in deformation techniques, that allow an animator intuitive and automated control over the complex motion of articulated characters, leaving them to focus, like a puppeteer on bringing the character to life. This talk will dwell on the art of character setup, with respect to techniques that make the character deform in response to various animator controls. It will emphasise on a deformation technique for modeling and animation using curves called wires. Wires provide the feel of a sculptors armature and act as a direct deformation technique as well as a low resolution visual representation of the objects they deform.

Karan Singh Born and raised in India. Got a bachelors in computer science from IIT Madras in '91 and a masters in '92. Dabbled in weather visualization on a NASA project, did odd production gigs and spent '94 working on a VR teleconferencing project for ATR in Japan. Finished up a PhD on human figure animation from Ohio State University in '95 and have since worked for Alias|Wavefront (SGI) in Toronto and Santa Barbara as graphics researcher, troublemaker and chief beer consumer. Research interests include anything that makes a pretty picture and character animation techniques in particular.