Output details

Fast simulation of skin sliding

Originality: In film visual effects and computer games, the realism of the animated characters is paramount to achieving an emotionally engaging experience. Skin sliding is a phenomenon in which skin moves over the underlying layers of fat, muscle and bone. It occurs commonly in the skinned areas covering joints and muscles. Due to the complex interconnections between these separate layers, it is difficult and expensive to simulate yet important to achieving realism. This paper presents a new method to achieve skin sliding effects. To resolve the anomaly of stretching and distortion on the skin layer, our method provides a real-time solution for this complicated problem.

Rigour: Our work was developed based on a technique from structural engineering and evaluates this technique against two other popular embedding methods, demonstrating by experimentation that this approach has the correct properties for simulating sliding skin.

Significance: Our method creates a realistic approximation of skin sliding in real-time, reducing texture distortions in the region where deformation occurs. In comparison to other approaches it is flexible, simple to use, and can be incorporated into any existing animation pipeline. Our method has been evaluated for use in film production by Double Negative studios. Upon request, we have sent our source code to the company.