An animation design tool utilizing texture

Abstract

The a u t h o r s h a v e n o t i c e d t h e e x p r e s s i v e n e s s of t e x t u r e s , and a d o p t e d these a s p r i m a r y m a t e r i a l s for a r t i s t i c expression i n c r e a t i n g CG p i c t u r e s . W e a r e d e v e l o p i n g s o f t w a r e w i t h which we can make computer animations from textures by using elementary image processing techniques. I n o r d e r t o make a d e s i g n e r ' s manual work more e f f i c i e n t , which i n c l u d e s d e s i g n i n g and programming w i t h frequent t r i a l and e r r o r , we have arranged several processing operations on material textures, and we have devised a kind of d i a g r a m m a t i c r e p r e s e n t a t i o n of o p e r a t i o n s i n o r d e r t o c o n s i d e r the whole p r o c e s s e a s i l y . I n e x p e r i m e n t s , we created some animations of f l a r i n g flames e t c . , using a small l i b r a r y of f u n c t i o n s . I t i s p o s s i b l e t o c r e a t e more complex animations a t low c o s t by t h i s method, because most r e s u l t a n t v i s u a l complexity can be l e f t t o the material t e x t u r e s i t s e l f T h i s p a p e r g i v e s an o u t l i n e of the method which we a r e developing,