2D Cartoon Rigs From Uncorresponded Vector Graphics

Abstract

This thesis introduces a novel algorithm that finds the correspondence between different poses of character(s) in two consecutive vectorized 2D key frames.This algorithm also derives a set of handles that allow the illustrator to animate the character to any desired pose. This is done in the hopes of reducing the time consuming manual work done by the animators in the process of in-betweening between key frames and to allow the animator to produce other frames by using the handles. The automated iterative approach described in this thesis finds the set of best possible transformations between two subsequent key frames by minimizing an energy function and performing a multi-label optimization. The resulting transformations are then used to calculate the blending weights that minimizes the displacement error. The final transformations can then either be interpolated to produce intermediate frames at a user specified rate or modified to animate the character.