The Jack human simulation system was developed at the Center for Human Modeling and Simulation at the
University of Pennsylvania
The University of Pennsylvania (also known as Penn or UPenn) is a private research university in Philadelphia. It is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and is ranked among the highest-regarded universitie ...
in the 1980s & 1990s under the direction of Professor Norman Badler. Conceived as an ergonomic assessment and virtual human prototyping system for
NASA
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA ) is an independent agency of the US federal government responsible for the civil space program, aeronautics research, and space research.
NASA was established in 1958, succeeding t ...
space shuttle development, it soon gathered funding from the U.S. Navy and U.S. Army for dismounted soldier simulation, from the U.S. Air Force for maintenance simulation, and from various other government and corporate users for their own applications. In 1996 the software was spun off into a privately held company and is now sold as an ergonomic human simulation toolkit (called Tecnomatix Jack) by Siemens. The research and development of the Jack system have led to such standards as
H-anim Humanoid Animation (HAnim) is an approved ISO and IEC standard for humanoid modeling and animation. HAnim defines a specification for defining interchangeable human figures so that those characters can be used across a variety of 3D games and simul ...
and MPEG4 Body Animation Parameters.
The roots of most modern human animation
Inverse kinematics systems can be traced to the research and development done for the Jack system.
[N. I. Badler, C. B. Phillips and B. L. Webber. ''Simulating Humans: Computer Graphics, Animation, and Control''. Oxford Univ. Press, 1993. ] Some of these animation systems include those integrated with
Autodesk
Autodesk, Inc. is an American multinational software corporation that makes software products and services for the architecture, engineering, construction, manufacturing, media, education, and entertainment industries. Autodesk is headquartered ...
's
3ds max,
Maya
Maya may refer to:
Civilizations
* Maya peoples, of southern Mexico and northern Central America
** Maya civilization, the historical civilization of the Maya peoples
** Maya language, the languages of the Maya peoples
* Maya (Ethiopia), a popul ...
, and proprietary in-house systems used by various animation studios, such as
Industrial Light and Magic
Industrial Light & Magic (ILM) is an American motion picture visual effects company that was founded on May 26, 1975 by George Lucas. It is a division of the film production company Lucasfilm, which Lucas founded, and was created when he began pro ...
.
Corporate history
The original Jack software company was called Transom. It was sold to
Engineering Animation, Inc.
Engineering Animation, Inc., or EAI, was a services and software company based in Ames, Iowa, United States. It remained headquartered there from its incorporation in 1990 until it was acquired in 2000 by UGS Corp., Unigraphics Solutions, Inc., now ...
(EAI) which later was acquired by
Unigraphics Solutions (UGS). Unigraphics was then re-incorporated into
Electronic Data Systems (EDS) and then spun off again as a privately held company called UGS. After the acquisition of
Tecnomatix, Jack became officially part of the Tecnomatix product line. UGS was eventually acquired by
Siemens
Siemens AG ( ) is a German multinational conglomerate corporation and the largest industrial manufacturing company in Europe headquartered in Munich with branch offices abroad.
The principal divisions of the corporation are ''Industry'', '' ...
.
References
External links
Jack product websiteTecnomatix Assembly Planning and Validation
{{DEFAULTSORT:Jack (Human Modeling)
Simulation software