Techniques and Workflows for Computer Graphics Animation System

Abstract

The disclosed implementations describe techniques and workflows for a computer graphics (CG) animation system. In some implementations, systems and methods are disclosed for representing scene composition and performing underlying computations within a unified generalized expression graph with cycles. Disclosed are natural mechanisms for level-of-detail control, adaptive caching, minimal re-compute, lazy evaluation, predictive computation and progressive refinement. The disclosed implementations provide real-time guarantees for minimum graphics frame rates and support automatic tradeoffs between rendering quality, accuracy and speed. The disclosed implementations also support new workflow paradigms, including layered animation and motion-path manipulation of articulated bodies.

What is claimed is: 
     
         1 . An animation method, comprising:
 providing a display environment for presentation on a display device;   providing a body for display in the display environment; and   determining a motion path for a first portion of the body relative to a second portion of the body.