PhysIK: Physically Plausible and Intuitive Keyframing

Abstract

We present an approach for animating characters using inverse kinematics (IK) handles that allows for intuitive keyframing of physically plausible motion. Specifically, we extend traditional IK and keyframing to include center-of-mass (CM) and inertia handles along with physically based templates to help an animator produce trajectories that respect physics during dynamic activities, such as swinging, stepping, and jumping. Animators can easily control both posture and physics-based quantities (inertia shape, CM position, and linear momentum) when building motions from scratch, but also have complete freedom to create exaggerated or impossible motions. We present results for a variety of planar characters of different morphologies.