Simulation-based cartoon hair animation

TLDR: A new hybrid technique for cartoon hair animation is described, one that allows the animators to create attractive and controllable hair animations without having to draw everything by hand except a sparse set of key frames.

Abstract: This paper describes a new hybrid technique for cartoon hair animation, one that allows the animators to create attractive and controllable hair animations without having to draw everything by hand except a sparse set of key frames. We demonstrate how to give a cel animation character accentuated hair motion. The novelty of this approach is that we neither simply interpolate the key frames nor generate the movement of the hair only using physical simulations. From a small number of rough sketches we prepare key frames that are used as indicators of hair motion. The hair movements are created based on a hair motion database built from physical simulations custom-designed by the animator. Hair animations with constraints from the key frames can be generated in two stages: a matching process to search for the desired motion sequences from the database and then smoothly connect them; the discrepancies between the database sequences and the key frames are interpolated throughoutthe animation using transition function.