[talks] C Barnes general exam

[Melissa Lawson]

Connelly Barnes will present his research seminar/general exam on Thursday 
October 16 at 10AM in Room 402.  The members of his committee are:  Adam 
Finkelstein (advisor), Perry Cook, and Tom Funkhouser.  Everyone is invited 
to attend his talk and those faculty wishing to remain for the oral exam following 
are welcome to do so.  His abstract and reading list follow below.
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Video Puppetry: A Performative Interface for Cutout Animation

Abstract

We present a video-based interface that allows users of all skill levels to quickly create
cutout-style animations by performing the character motions. The puppeteer first creates a
cast of physical puppets using paper, markers and scissors. He then physically moves these
puppets to tell a story. Using an inexpensive overhead camera our system tracks the
motions of the puppets and renders them on a new background while removing the puppeteer's
hands. Our system runs in real-time (at 30 fps) so that the puppeteer and the audience can
immediately see the animation that is created. Our system also supports a variety of
constraints and effects including articulated characters, multi-track animation, scene
changes, camera controls, 21/2-D environments, shadows, and animation cycles. Users have
evaluated our system both quantitatively and qualitatively: In tests of low-level
dexterity, our system has similar accuracy to a mouse interface. For simple story telling,
users prefer our system over either a mouse interface or traditional puppetry. We
demonstrate that even first-time users, including an eleven-year-old, can use our system
to quickly turn an original story idea into an animation.

Book

     3D Computer Graphics, 2nd Edition, Alan Watt

Papers

   * Layered acting for character animation
     Dontcheva, M, Yngve, G, Popovic, Z. 2003. SIGGRAPH '03

   * ARTag, a Fiducial Marker System Using Digital Techniques
     FIALA, M. 2005. Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition, 2005. CVPR '05.

   * OBBTree: A Hierarchical Structure for Rapid Interference Detection
     GOTTSCHALK, S., LIN, M. C., AND MANOCHA, D. 1996. SIGGRAPH.

   * Closed-Form Solution of Absolute Orientation using Unit Quaternions
     HORN, B. K. P. 1986. Journal of Optical Society of America

   * As-rigid-as-possible shape manipulation
     Igarashi, T, Moscovich, T, Hughes, J. 2005. ACM Trans. Graph.
(Proc. SIGGRAPH), 1134-1141.

   * Tangible bits: towards seamless interfaces between people, bits and atoms
     Ishii, H, Ullmer, B. 1997. Proc. SIGCHI

   * Dinosaur input device
     Knep, B, Hayes, C, Sayre, R, Williams, T. 1995. Proc. SIGCHI

   * Object recognition from local scale-invariant features
     Lowe, D. 1999. International Conference on Computer Vision, 1150-1157.

   * A Taxonomy of Mixed Reality Visual Displays
     MILGRAM, P., AND KISHINO, F. 1994. IEICE Transactions on Information and Systems

   * Motion doodles: an interface for sketching character motion
     Thorne, M, Burke, D, Van de Panne, M. 2004. SIGGRAPH '04.

   * Detection and tracking of point features
     Tomasi, C, Kanade, T. 1991. Technical Report CMU-CS-91-132