Speaker: Dr. Paul Kry (McGill University, Canada)

Venue: M6058 (Screening Room 2), CMC
Conducted in English. Free Admission 

 
Abstract:
Computer graphics research provides important tools for the creation of art and animation. In this talk, I will present new tools that we have developed, and that open up new possibilities in three different areas. For animation, Inverse kinematics (IK) provides the fine level control necessary to bring characters to life, but it can be challenging to create physically plausible motion from scratch, and secondary dynamics overlaid on a keyframed character can make it tricky to prescribe constraints at specific points in time. With PhysIK and Inverse Kinodynamics we address these problems, using physics based IK handles, and a solver for direct control of short lived secondary dynamics. For video, we investigate the ability of viewers to perceive defocus in video, and create software for auto-focusing that uses motion capture and predictive filtering to reduce blur. Finally, for painting murals we have developed a system that uses a quadrotor flying robot to create stippled artworks. Beyond the challenges of low level control, there are a number of computational problems, such as path planning with the constraints of limited battery life, dynamic adjustment of stipples to accommodate errors in placement, and the variability of stipple sizes as ink on the brush gets used up. I will present examples of our results in these three areas and discuss future avenues of research that can assist artists with creative efforts.

About the Speaker:

Paul G. Kry received his B.Math. in computer science with electrical engineering electives in 1997 from the University of Waterloo, and his M.Sc. and Ph.D. in computer science from the University of British Columbia in 2000 and 2005. He spent time as a visitor at Rutgers during most of his Ph.D., and did postdoctoral work at INRIA Rhône Alpes and the LNRS at Université René Descartes. He is currently an associate professor at McGill University. His research interests are in physically based animation, including deformation, contact, motion editing, and simulated control of locomotion, grasping, and balance. He co-chaired ACM/EG Symposium on Computer Animation in 2012, Graphics Interface in 2014, and served on numerous program committees, including ACM SIGGRAPH, ACM/EG Symposium on Computer Animation, Pacific Graphics, and Graphics Interface. He is currently an associate editor for Computer Graphics Forum, and for Computers and Graphics. He heads the Computer Animation and Interaction Capture Laboratory at McGill University. Paul Kry is currently the president of the Canadian Human Computer Communications Society, the organization which sponsors the annual Graphics Interface conference. Starting September 2016 Paul Kry is serving a 3 year term as a director at large on the ACM SIGGRAPH executive committee.Find out more at http://www.cs.mcgill.ca/~kry/