An avar or animation variable (or hinge) is a variable controlling the position of part of an
animated object, such as a character. The character "Woody" in the
Disney
The Walt Disney Company, commonly known as Disney (), is an American multinational mass media and entertainment conglomerate headquartered at the Walt Disney Studios complex in Burbank, California. Disney was originally founded on October ...
•
Pixar
Pixar Animation Studios (commonly known as Pixar () and stylized as P I X A R) is an American computer animation studio known for its critically and commercially successful computer animated feature films. It is based in Emeryville, Californi ...
film ''
Toy Story
''Toy Story'' is a 1995 American computer-animated comedy film directed by John Lasseter (in his feature directorial debut), produced by Pixar Animation Studios and released by Walt Disney Pictures. The first installment in the '' Toy Story ...
'' (1995) uses 712 avars (212 on his face alone).
How We Do it - Index
/ref> Successive sets of avars control all movement of the character from frame to frame. In development, they are used to define the junctions of a stick model. Later, they are incorporated into a full wire frame model
A wire-frame model, also wireframe model, is a visual representation of a three-dimensional (3D) physical object used in 3D computer graphics. It is created by specifying each edge of the physical object where two mathematically continuous ...
or a model built of polygons. Finally, surfaces are added, requiring a lengthy process of rendering to produce the final scene
Scene (from Ancient Greek, Greek σκηνή ''skēnḗ'') may refer to:
Arts, entertainment, and media Music
*Scene (subculture), a youth subculture from the early 2000s characterized by a distinct music and style. Groups and performers
* The S ...
.
There are several ways of generating the avar values. Motion capture
Motion capture (sometimes referred as mo-cap or mocap, for short) is the process of recording the movement of objects or people. It is used in military, entertainment, sports, medical applications, and for validation of computer vision and robo ...
uses a real person acting out the part, tracked by a video camera
A video camera is an optical instrument that captures videos (as opposed to a movie camera, which records images on film). Video cameras were initially developed for the television industry but have since become widely used for a variety of other ...
. ''Toy Story
''Toy Story'' is a 1995 American computer-animated comedy film directed by John Lasseter (in his feature directorial debut), produced by Pixar Animation Studios and released by Walt Disney Pictures. The first installment in the '' Toy Story ...
'' uses no motion capture, manual control by a skilled animator can produce effects not easily carried out by a human actor.
See also
* Animation
Animation is a method by which image, still figures are manipulated to appear as Motion picture, moving images. In traditional animation, images are drawn or painted by hand on transparent cel, celluloid sheets to be photographed and exhibited ...
* Animation database
An animation database is a database which stores fragments of animations or human movements and which can be accessed, analyzed and queried to develop and assemble new animations.S. Kuroki, "Walkthrough using Animation database MOVE" in ''Database ...
* Computer generated imagery
Computer-generated imagery (CGI) is the use of computer graphics to create or contribute to images in art, printed media, video games, simulators, and visual effects in films, television programs, shorts, commercials, and videos. The images ma ...
* 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 ...
* Pixar
Pixar Animation Studios (commonly known as Pixar () and stylized as P I X A R) is an American computer animation studio known for its critically and commercially successful computer animated feature films. It is based in Emeryville, Californi ...
External links
Pixar and Disney's Toy Story
References
Computer animation
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