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Digital puppetry
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Digital puppetry
Digital puppetry is the manipulation and performance of digitally animated 2D or 3D figures and objects in a virtual environment that are rendered in real-time by computers. It is most commonly used in filmmaking and television production but has also been used in interactive theme park attractions and live theatre.
The exact definition of what is and is not digital puppetry is subject to debate among puppeteers and computer graphics designers, but it is generally agreed that digital puppetry differs from conventional computer animation in that it involves performing characters in real-time, rather than animating them frame by frame.
Digital puppetry is closely associated with character animation, motion capture technologies, and 3D animation, as well as skeletal animation. Digital puppetry is also known as virtual puppetry, performance animation, living animation, aniforms, live animation and real-time animation (although the latter also refers to animation generated by computer game engines). Machinima is another form of digital puppetry, and Machinima performers are increasingly being identified as puppeteers.
One of the earliest pioneers of digital puppetry was Lee Harrison III. He conducted experiments in the early 1960s that animated figures using analog circuits and a cathode ray tube. Harrison rigged up a body suit with potentiometers and created the first working motion capture rig, animating 3D figures in real-time on his CRT screen. He made several short films with this system, which he called ANIMAC. Among the earliest examples of digital puppets produced with the system included a character called "Mr. Computer Image" who was controlled by a combination of the ANIMAC's body control rig and an early form of voice-controlled automatic lip sync.
Perhaps the first truly commercially successful example of a digitally animated figure being performed and rendered in real-time is Waldo C. Graphic, a character created in 1988 by Jim Henson and Pacific Data Images for the Muppet television series The Jim Henson Hour. Henson had used the Scanimate system to generate a digital version of his Nobody character in real-time for the television series Sesame Street as early as 1970 and Waldo grew out of experiments Henson conducted to create a computer generated version of his character Kermit the Frog in 1985.
Waldo's strength as a computer-generated puppet was that he could be controlled by a single puppeteer (Steve Whitmire) in real-time in concert with conventional puppets. The computer image of Waldo was mixed with the video feed of the camera focused on physical puppets so that all of the puppeteers in a scene could perform together. (It was already standard Muppeteering practice to use monitors while performing, so the use of a virtual puppet did not significantly increase the complexity of the system.) Afterward, in post-production, PDI re-rendered Waldo in full resolution, adding a few dynamic elements on top of the performed motion.
Waldo C. Graphic can be seen today in Muppet*Vision 3D at Disney's Hollywood Studios in Lake Buena Vista, Florida.
Another significant development in digital puppetry in 1988 was Mike Normal, which Brad DeGraf and partner Michael Wahrman developed to show off the real-time capabilities of Silicon Graphics' then-new 4D series workstations. Unveiled at the 1988 SIGGRAPH convention, it was the first live performance of a digital character. Mike was a sophisticated talking head driven by a specially built controller that allowed a single puppeteer to control many parameters of the character's face, including mouth, eyes, expression, and head position.
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Digital puppetry
Digital puppetry is the manipulation and performance of digitally animated 2D or 3D figures and objects in a virtual environment that are rendered in real-time by computers. It is most commonly used in filmmaking and television production but has also been used in interactive theme park attractions and live theatre.
The exact definition of what is and is not digital puppetry is subject to debate among puppeteers and computer graphics designers, but it is generally agreed that digital puppetry differs from conventional computer animation in that it involves performing characters in real-time, rather than animating them frame by frame.
Digital puppetry is closely associated with character animation, motion capture technologies, and 3D animation, as well as skeletal animation. Digital puppetry is also known as virtual puppetry, performance animation, living animation, aniforms, live animation and real-time animation (although the latter also refers to animation generated by computer game engines). Machinima is another form of digital puppetry, and Machinima performers are increasingly being identified as puppeteers.
One of the earliest pioneers of digital puppetry was Lee Harrison III. He conducted experiments in the early 1960s that animated figures using analog circuits and a cathode ray tube. Harrison rigged up a body suit with potentiometers and created the first working motion capture rig, animating 3D figures in real-time on his CRT screen. He made several short films with this system, which he called ANIMAC. Among the earliest examples of digital puppets produced with the system included a character called "Mr. Computer Image" who was controlled by a combination of the ANIMAC's body control rig and an early form of voice-controlled automatic lip sync.
Perhaps the first truly commercially successful example of a digitally animated figure being performed and rendered in real-time is Waldo C. Graphic, a character created in 1988 by Jim Henson and Pacific Data Images for the Muppet television series The Jim Henson Hour. Henson had used the Scanimate system to generate a digital version of his Nobody character in real-time for the television series Sesame Street as early as 1970 and Waldo grew out of experiments Henson conducted to create a computer generated version of his character Kermit the Frog in 1985.
Waldo's strength as a computer-generated puppet was that he could be controlled by a single puppeteer (Steve Whitmire) in real-time in concert with conventional puppets. The computer image of Waldo was mixed with the video feed of the camera focused on physical puppets so that all of the puppeteers in a scene could perform together. (It was already standard Muppeteering practice to use monitors while performing, so the use of a virtual puppet did not significantly increase the complexity of the system.) Afterward, in post-production, PDI re-rendered Waldo in full resolution, adding a few dynamic elements on top of the performed motion.
Waldo C. Graphic can be seen today in Muppet*Vision 3D at Disney's Hollywood Studios in Lake Buena Vista, Florida.
Another significant development in digital puppetry in 1988 was Mike Normal, which Brad DeGraf and partner Michael Wahrman developed to show off the real-time capabilities of Silicon Graphics' then-new 4D series workstations. Unveiled at the 1988 SIGGRAPH convention, it was the first live performance of a digital character. Mike was a sophisticated talking head driven by a specially built controller that allowed a single puppeteer to control many parameters of the character's face, including mouth, eyes, expression, and head position.