An armature is the name of the

kinematic chain In mechanical engineering, a kinematic chain is an assembly of rigid bodies connected by joints to provide constrained (or desired) motion that is the mathematical model for a mechanical system. Reuleaux, F., 187''The Kinematics of Machinery, ...

s used in

computer animation Computer animation is the process used for digitally generating animations. The more general term computer-generated imagery (CGI) encompasses both static scenes (still images) and dynamic images (moving images), while computer animation refe ...

to simulate the motions of virtual human or animal characters. In the context of animation, the

inverse kinematics In computer animation and robotics, inverse kinematics is the mathematical process of calculating the variable joint parameters needed to place the end of a kinematic chain, such as a robot manipulator or animation character's skeleton, in a g ...

of the armature is the most relevant computational algorithm. There are two types of digital armatures: Keyframing (stop-motion) armatures and real-time (puppeteering) armatures.

Keyframing In animation and filmmaking, a key frame (or keyframe) is a drawing or shot that defines the starting and ending points of a smooth transition. These are called ''frames'' because their position in time is measured in frames on a strip of fil ...

armatures were initially developed to assist in animating digital characters without basing the movement on a live performance. The animator poses a device manually for each keyframe, while the character in the animation is set up with a mechanical structure equivalent to the armature. The device is connected to the animation software through a driver program and each move is recorded for a particular frame in time.

Real-time Real-time or real time describes various operations in computing or other processes that must guarantee response times within a specified time (deadline), usually a relatively short time. A real-time process is generally one that happens in defined ...

armatures are similar, but they are puppeteered by one or more people and captured in real-time.

References

3D graphics software Computational physics {{compu-graphics-stub

See also

References