50 July 2000/Vol. 43, No.

7 COMMUNICATIONS OF THE ACM

 a a

To solve the problem of generating

realistic human motion, animation
software has to not only produce
realistic movement but provide full
control of the process to the animator.

Controlling Physics in
Realistic Character
Animation
Zoran Popović

For the last 10 years, computers have been highly involved process adds further difficulties. This
used with great success to produce realistic motion of dual goal of controlled realism motivated me (and
passive structures by simulating the physical laws of my advisor Andy Witkin, now at Pixar Animation
motion—something that would be very difficult to Studios) to devise the methodology described here.
BY PETER SUMANESENI AND DIRECTED BY BARBARA MONES, ANIMATION RESEARCH LABS,
DEPARTMENT OF COMPUTER SCIENCE & ENGINEERING, UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON)

do by hand. Examples include the simulation of col-

liding rigid bodies and of cloth motion. It would Reusable Character Motion Libraries
IMAGES FROM "MIRA AND THE WIND" (ANIMATED BY ANTHONY LAMPA AND LIT

seem that creating realistic character animation
would not be significantly more difficult than com-
puting the motion of cloth or other such passive
objects. As with passive-object simulations, a charac-
ter’s motion needs to be consistent with the laws of
physics for an animation to appear realistic. But con-
sistency alone is not sufficient for generating realistic-
looking animations. The character also produces
forces that create locomotion.
Humans utilize their muscles in many ways in
order to walk or run, and only a small set of simu-
lated animations would look realistic (see Figure 1).
To produce natural-looking motion, it’s not enough
to have just physically correct motion; the intricacies
of the character’s muscles and bones and how they
pertain to motion have to be taken into account. Pro-
viding the animator with the ability to control this
a a
The prevalent use of keyframing and procedural
methods in computer animation stems from the fact
that these methods put full control of the resulting
motion in the hands and imagination of the anima-
tor. The burden of animation quality rests entirely
on the animator, much as puppeteers have full con-
trol over the movement of their marionettes by
pulling on specific strings. Highly skilled animators
and special-effects wizards appreciate this low-level
control, because it allows them to fully express their
artistry.
Having so much control also makes it that much
more difficult for the world’s less-talented animators
to create animations. In fact, the task of appropriately
positioning a character in a specific pose at the right
time is arduous, even for the simplest animation.
Instead of incrementally setting keyframes for various

COMMUNICATIONS OF THE ACM July 2000/Vol. 43, No. 7 51

 Figure 1. Automatically generated human jump
(rendered by Peter Sumanaseni, University of Washington).
character poses, the unskilled animator would ide-
ally like to be able to edit high-level motion con-
structs. For example, an animator might want to
reposition footprints or simply specify that a move-
ment should be more energetic. Alternatively, the
animator might want to impose greater importance
on balance while performing a movement, or change
a character’s behavior by specifying the walking sur-
face be significantly more slippery.
The animator should also be able to access a
human-run library, instantiating a specific run by
demanding realism and specifying the character
dimensions, foot placements, even the emotional
state of the runner. By limiting, say, the left knee’s
range of motion, the library would produce a limp-
ing run satisfying all previous requirements. The
animator should be able to specify the finer detail
constraints on bounce quality, air-time, and specific
arm poses (see the first sidebar). Finally, it should be
possible to merge a collection of instantiated motion
sequences, including, say, human run, human jump,
karate kicks, soccer ball kick, and tennis serve, from
52 July 2000/Vol. 43, No. 7 COMMUNICATIONS OF THE ACM
the library to produce a seamless character anima-
tion. The use of such human-movement libraries
would make computer animation a much more
accessible storytelling medium useful to a much
more diverse population of computer-content
providers.
One of the most difficult problems in light of
such extremely flexible libraries is how to maintain
the realism of the motion despite all the possible
changes in the motion specification. Although not
always needed, the realism requirement would
enable even unskilled animators to create the
motion of synthetic humans—arguably one of the
greatest challenges in computer animation. Realistic
synthetic humans would be very useful in a number
of areas:
Education. Using desktop PCs, children could
learn from personal instructors that seem as real
as the teachers in their classrooms.
Entertainment. In digital filmmaking and video-
game design, creating realistic human characters
 Human Run and Jump Libraries
Figure. Frames from the crossed footsteps, limp, and wide footsteps run and
from the diagonal, obstacle, unbalanced, and twist jump.
A s a proof of concept, I generated two libraries: human run
and human jump. The figure shows the original motion-cap-
ture sequence of a human run from which the motion library was
constructed, as well as a selection of markedly different automati-
cally generated animations and a range of jumps generated from a
single human-jump-motion library. For input sequences, I used high-
detail (120Hz) motion-capture data. During the fitting stage, I used
drastically different simplification approaches for the libraries to
show the versatility of the physics-based framework.
All of these motion sequences would be difficult to create using
existing motion-editing tools. While a number of constraints could
conceivably be introduced to enhance realism, for some sequences
they would require an overwhelming amount of work, on par with
creating a realistic motion sequence from scratch through keyfram-
ing. In contrast, my approach requires a minimal number of intu-
itive changes for each transformed sequence, including the
following human run motions:
Crossed footsteps. To force the character to twist at each step,
crisscrossing its feet, I moved footprints to the opposite side of the
body.
Limp run. To create the appearance of a leg in a cast, I removed
the left knee DOF. In the final motion sequence, the character
leans to the side and swings its right leg in a more dramatic fash-
ion, creating a realistic (albeit painful) limp run.
Wide footsteps. To force the character to leap significantly far-
ther to the side at each step, I repositioned the footprint mechani-
cal constraints to be wider apart. Since each step then covers
more distance, the overall resulting motion has leaps of smaller
height, as in the figure. The appropriate change in the upper body
orientation is apparent in the resulting motion.
Moon run. To create a human-run sequence under lunar gravity, I
reduced the gravity constant to the gravity on the moon’s surface.
The resulting run is slower and has much higher leaps appropriate
for the low-gravity environment.
Neptune run. To see how the running sequence would adjust to
an extreme gravitational field, I increased the Earth’s gravity ten-
fold. The resulting flight phase of the run is so low to the ground
that the running character appears to be speed walking.
Short-legged limp run. To test the limits of character-model
modification, I shortened the shin of the right leg and fixed the left
knee DOF, as in the limp run. The output running sequence has an
extreme limp, with the leg in the cast swinging more to the side
due to the shorter right leg.
I created the broad-jump motion library to explore how far a
character could be simplified without losing the dynamic essence of
the jump. In order to demonstrate the power and flexibility of
these simplification tools, I used a drastically different simplification
approach from the one used in the human-run motions. I reduced
the upper body structure to a single mass point that moves with
three prismatic muscles pushing off from the rest of the body.
Since the legs move in unison during a broad jump, I also turned
them into a single leg. I turned the knee hinge joint into a prismatic
joint, showing that even with this completely changed character
model, the dynamic properties of the broad jump are preserved.
The simplified character (“hopper”), which lacks angular joints and
has 10 DOFs, six of which are the global position and orientation
of the model, can perform the following jumps:
Diagonal. I displaced the landing position to the side and constrained
the torso orientation to point straight ahead. This change realigned
the push-off and anticipation stages in the direction of the jump.
Obstacle. To force the legs to be raised during the flight stage, I
raised the landing position and introduced a hurdle. As a result, the
character’s push-off is more vertical, and the legs tuck in during
flight.
Unbalanced. I removed the final pose constraint that imposed
the upright position. In the resulting sequence, the character never
uses its muscles to stand up upon landing, since doing so requires
extra energy. Instead of straightening up, the character tumbles
forward, giving the appearance of poor landing balance.
Twist. To mandate a 90-degree turn, I introduced the torso-ori-
entation pose constraint at the end of the animation. The output
motion shows the change in the anticipation and introduction of
the body twist during flight. The landing also changes to accommo-
date the sideways landing position. c
COMMUNICATIONS OF THE ACM July 2000/Vol. 43, No. 7 53
 Figure 2. Outline of the motion-transformation process. The novel approach to the problem of
creating animations I describe here main-
tains a level of realism in light of all other
motion modifications. Instead of motion
synthesis, I approach such animations
through “motion transformation,” or the
adaptation of existing motion. For example,
instead of generating an animation from
scratch, I transform existing human-run
sequences by changing their parameters
until the resulting motion meets the needs
of the animation. A number of other com-
puter-animation researchers have also
adopted the motion-transformation
approach, which has arguably become the
Figure 3. Kinematic character simplification: most active research direction in computer
(a) elbows and spine abstracted away; (b) upper body animation [2, 3, 6, 12].
reduced to the center of mass; and (c) symmetric Any dynamically plausible motion, such
movement abstraction. as captured motion and physical simula-
tions, can be used as input to my transfor-
mation algorithm. The first step in the
algorithm is construction of a simplified
character model and the fitting of the
motion of the simplified model to the cap-
tured motion data. This fitted motion is a
physical spacetime-optimization solution
is perhaps the greatest open challenge. More including the body’s mass properties, pose, foot-
sophisticated models of human motion and print constraints, and muscles, as well as the
appearance are needed. motion property being optimized, called the
Human-computer interaction. The face any com- “objective function” [11] (see the second sidebar).
puter shows its user is impersonal. Realistic full- To edit an animation, the animator modifies the
bodied human “guides” would make computers constraints and physical parameters of the model
more accessible to a wider population. and other spacetime-optimization parameters,
Teleconferencing. By combining video with more including limb geometry, footprint positions,
sophisticated shape and motion information, tele- objective function, and gravity. From this altered
conferencing would obviate the need for using spacetime “parameterization,” the algorithm com-
single-viewpoint video, allowing participants putes a transformed motion sequence and maps the
more freedom of movement and a greater sense motion change of the simplified model back onto
of presence. Imagine, in the next two to five the original motion to produce the final animation
years, realistic synthetic avatars representing us in sequence.
the distributed digital world, changing the notion In addition to providing a methodology for ensur-
of teleconferencing as we’ve come to know it. ing realism of such motion, the spacetime-optimiza-
tion model is an intuitive tool for the high-level
Although people are generally quick at visually per- editing of motion sequences, including: foot place-
ceiving the subtleties of human motion in nature, our ment and timing; the kinematic structure of the char-
perceptual understanding of natural movement offers acter; the dynamic environment of the animation;
little help to an animator trying to generate such and the motion property being optimized by the ani-
motion. Moreover, synthesizing and analyzing the mation task. The algorithm’s ability to preserve
high-quality motion of dynamic 3D articulated char- dynamics of motion and the existence of a rich set of
acters has proven to be an extremely difficult problem. motion controls enables animators to create motion
The collective knowledge of biomechanics, control libraries from a single input motion sequence. Once
theory, robot-motion planning, and computer anima- the original motion is fitted onto the spacetime-opti-
tion indicates that the underlying processes governing mization model, the model can then be presented to
motion are complex and difficult to control. the animator as a tool for generating the movement

54 July 2000/Vol. 43, No. 7 COMMUNICATIONS OF THE ACM

that meets the specifications of the given animation developer, the actuated character is placed in the
they’re working on. dynamic simulation environment to produce the
final motion sequence.
Transforming the Motion Sequence Spacetime optimization does not use controllers
As in other motion-capture editing methods, my algo- or perform simulations. An animation problem is
rithm (presented in 1999) does not synthesize motion phrased as a large variational optimization, whose
from scratch. Instead, it transforms the input motion solution is the input motion-capture sequence.
sequence to satisfy the needs of the animation. Unfortunately, spacetime-optimization methods
Although its development was motivated by the gen- have not been shown to be feasible for computing
eral need to enable realistic high-level control of high- human motion over long periods of time because of
quality captured-motion sequences, the same the nonlinearity and parameter-space explosion. For
methods can be applied to the motion of arbitrary this reason, my approach first simplifies the charac-
sources of a realistic motion [8, 9]. ter model. The entire transformation process (see
At its core, the algorithm uses the spacetime-opti- Figure 2) involves four main stages:
mization formulation, which maintains the dynamic
integrity of motion and provides intuitive motion Character simplification. The tool developer creates
control. Before these results were available, dynamic an abstract character model containing the mini-
spacetime-optimization methods were used exclu- mal number of degrees of freedom (DOFs) neces-
sively for motion synthesis, rather than for motion sary to capture the essence of the input motion
transformation [7, 10]. while mapping input motion onto the simplified
Also worth noting is that spacetime optimization model.
is different from the robot-controller-simulation Spacetime motion fitting. The tool developer finds
approach to character animation [4, 5]. Although the spacetime-optimization problem whose solu-
both approaches generate realistic motion, robot- tion closely matches the simplified character
controller approaches do not solve directly for motion.
motion paths. Instead, they construct controllers Spacetime edit. The animator then adjusts space-
that generate forces at a character’s joints based on time motion parameters, introduces new pose
the state of the character’s dynamic properties. Once constraints, changes the character kinematics,
the controllers are generated by a robot-control defines the objective function, and more.
Turning Motion into a Spacetime-Optimization Problem

A “character” is an object performing motions of its own

accord. It has a finite number of kinematic DOFs and a finite
number of muscles. DOFs usually represent joint angles of the char-
acter’s extremities; muscles exert forces on different parts of the
body, thereby actuating locomotion.
The goal of motion synthesis is to find a character’s desired
motion. This “goal motion” is rarely specified uniquely; rather, the
animator looks for a motion that satisfies some set of storytelling
requirements. Generally, these requirements are represented
through constraints, external forces, and the objective function.
The requirements of a sequence animating a computer-generated
character getting up from a chair might include the fact that the
character is sitting in the chair at time t0 and standing up at final
time t1. The spacetime-optimization formulation refers to such
requirements as “pose constraints,” insisting the character use its
own muscles to satisfy these constraints.
In addition to pose constraints, the environment imposes a num-
ber of “mechanical constraints” onto the body. For example, in
order to enforce the upright position of a human, the animator con-
strains both feet to the floor. The floor exerts forces onto the feet,
ensuring they never penetrate the floor’s surface. All mechanical
constraints provide the external forces necessary to satisfy these
constraints. Other external forces, such as gravity and wind, may
also be required within the environment.
Finally, the animator has to ensure the dynamic correctness of
the motion by constraining the acceleration of each DOF. Intuitively,
the formulation ensures that F=ma holds for all DOFs at all times,
calling such constraints “dynamics constraints.” As long as these con-
straints are satisfied, the resulting motion is physically correct.
Constraints determine a large portion of the motion specifica-
tion. In the spacetime framework, the objective function provides
the means to modify the quality of motion. Some examples of easily
measured objective functions include energy consumption, static bal-
ance, and the amount of force exerted on the floor. Ideally, the ani-
mator also wants to control other qualities of motion like agility and
even the character’s emotional state.
Motion defined this way maps straightforwardly onto a nonlin-
early constrained optimization problem; the algorithm optimizes the
objective function, ensuring that the pose and mechanical and dynam-
ics constraints are satisfied. This optimization process is a variational
calculus problem, since it solves for functions of time, instead of
values. c

COMMUNICATIONS OF THE ACM July 2000/Vol. 43, No. 7 55

 Figure 4. Full and simplified characters for human run and broad jump.

56 July 2000/Vol. 43, No. 7 COMMUNICATIONS OF THE ACM

Motion reconstruction. The algorithm remaps the
change in motion introduced by the spacetime
edit onto the original motion to produce the final
animation.
Once the spacetime model is computed, it can be
reused to generate a wide range of animations. The
spacetime-edit and motion-reconstruction stages
take much less time to compute than the first two
stages, enabling the computation of transformed
motion sequences at near-interactive speeds.
Instead of solving spacetime-constraint optimiza-
tions on the full character, the tool developer first
constructs a simplified character model the algo-
rithm then uses for all spacetime optimizations (see
Figure 3). Simplified models capture the minimum
amount of structure necessary for the input motion
task, thus capturing the essence of the input motion.
Subsequent motion transformations modify this
abstract representation while preserving the specific
feel and uniqueness of the original motion. The sim-
plification process draws from ideas in biomechanics
research [1]. One of them, abstractly speaking, is
that highly dynamic natural motion is created by
“throwing the mass around,” or changing the relative
position of body mass. The result is that a human
arm with more than 10 DOFs can be represented by
a rigid object with only three shoulder DOFs with-
out losing much of its “mass displacement ability.”
Simplification of body parts also depends on the
type of input motion. For example, although simpli-
fying an arm may work well for the human-run
motion, the same simplification would not be useful
for representing, say, the ball-throwing motion.
In the motion libraries I’ve created so far, the sim-
plification process reduces the number of kinematic
DOFs, as well as muscle DOFs, by a factor of two to
five (see Figure 4). Since each DOF is represented by
hundreds of unknown coefficients during the opti-
mization process, simplification reduces the size of
the optimization by as many as 1,000 unknowns.
More important, a character with fewer DOFs also
creates constraints with significantly smaller nonlin-
earities. In practice, the optimization has no conver-
gence problems with the simplified character
models, and does not converge with the full-charac-
ter model.
Character simplification is performed manually
by the animator applying three basic principles:
DOF removal. Some body parts are fused together
by removing the DOFs linking them. Elbow and
wrist DOFs are usually removed for running and
walking motion sequences in which they have lit-
tle influence on motion.
Node subtree removal. In some cases of high-energy
motion, the entire subtree of the character hierar-
chy can be replaced with a single object, usually a
mass point with three translational DOFs. For
example, the upper body of a human character
can be reduced to a mass point for various jump-
ing-motion sequences in which the upper body
“catapults” in the direction of the jump.
Symmetric movement. Broad-jump motions contain
inherent symmetry, as both legs move in unison.
Thus, the simplification process abstracts both
legs into one, turning the character into a
monopode, as if it were a pogo stick.
Once the character model is simplified, the origi-
nal motion can be mapped onto it. However, before
the animator can edit the motion with spacetime
constraints, the tool developer creates not only
dynamically correct but realistic motion of the sim-
plified model by identifying the spacetime-optimiza-
tion problem whose solution comes very close to the
original motion.
The motion-transformation framework uses an
abstract representation of muscles to apply forces
directly onto DOFs, much like robotic servo-motors
positioned at joints apply forces on robotic limbs.
The algorithm places these muscles at each character
DOF, ensuring the minimum set of muscles to
achieve the full range of character motion.
Most of the spacetime constraints fall out of the
input motion. Therefore, in a run or walk sequence,
the library creator specifies mechanical point con-
straints at every moment the foot is in contact with
the floor. Similarly, a leg-kick animation defines a
pose constraint at the time the leg strikes the target.
An animator can also introduce additional con-
straints to add control during motion editing. For
example, the animator might introduce a hurdle
obstacle into the human-jump-motion environ-
ment, forcing the character to, say, clear a certain
height during flight.
With the spacetime-optimization problem
defined appropriately, the animator can edit the
intuitive “control knobs” of the spacetime-optimiza-
tion formulation to produce a nearly inexhaustible
number of different realistic motion sequences.
Spacetime Edits
A spacetime-optimization formulation provides
powerful and intuitive control of many aspects of the
dynamic animation: pose and environment con-
straints, explicit kinematic and dynamic properties
of the character, and the objective function.
COMMUNICATIONS OF THE ACM July 2000/Vol. 43, No. 7 57
 By changing existing constraints, the animator
can rearrange foot placements in both space and
time. For example, a human-run sequence can be
changed into a zig-zag run on an uphill slope by
moving the floor-contact constraints further apart
while progressively elevating them. The constraint
timing can also be changed; an example involves
extending the floor-contact-time duration of one leg
to create an animation in which the character
appears to favor one leg. The animator can also
introduce new obstacles along the running path,
producing new constraints that might require legs to
clear a specified height during the flight phase of the
run. It would also be possible to alter the environ-
ment of the run by changing the gravity constant,
producing a human-run sequence on, say, the
moon’s surface.
Changes can also be made on the character model
itself. For example, the animator can change the
limb dimensions or their mass distribution charac-
teristics and observe the motion’s resulting dynamic
change. The animator can remove body parts,
restrict various DOFs to specific ranges, and remove
DOFs altogether, effectively placing certain body
parts in a cast; for example, different injured-run
sequences would result from shortening a leg, mak-
ing one leg heavier than the other, reducing the
range of motion for the knee DOF, or removing the
knee DOF altogether. Muscle properties can also
affect the look of transformed motion; for example,
if the force output of the muscles is limited, the
character would be forced to compensate by using
other muscles.
Finally, the animator can change the overall “feel”
of the motion by adding additional appropriately
weighted objective components; for example, a
softer-looking run would result from an objective
component minimizing floor-impact forces. Alter-
natively, the run can be made to look more stable
by including a measure of balance in the objective
component.
After each edit, the algorithm re-solves the space-
time-optimization problem and produces a new
transformed animation. Since the optimization start-
ing point is near the desired solution, and all dynamic
constraints are satisfied at the outset, optimization
converges rapidly. In practice, although the initial
spacetime optimization may take more than 15 min-
utes to converge, spacetime optimizations during the
editing process take less than two minutes.
Conclusion
This research represents the first solution of the
problem of editing captured motion that accounts
58 July 2000/Vol. 43, No. 7 COMMUNICATIONS OF THE ACM
for dynamics. The powerful high-level controls of
the spacetime formulation are especially appealing,
because they allow the animator to apply intuitive
modifications to the input motion sequence. This
intuitive control makes the algorithm particularly
amenable to the motion-library paradigm.
However, three important areas in realistic char-
acter animation still need to be addressed: integrat-
ing and applying multiple realistic motion sequences
into a single continuous character animation; retar-
geting motion to different characters while preserv-
ing realism; and developing an intuitive interface to
the motion-data libraries. Eventually, research in
these areas would allow the reusable-motion para-
digm to find its way not only into film and video
games, but into every home PC. It won’t be long
before every PC has sufficient 3D rendering and
computing resources to let anyone use computer
animation as an expressive medium, much as Web
pages have emerged as a ubiquitous form of expres-
sion today. Reusable motion is a crucial concept
enabling practically any animator, no matter how
skilled, to become an expressive storyteller. c
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Zoran Popović (zoran@cs.washington.edu) is an assistant
professor in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering
at the University of Washington in Seattle.
© 2000 ACM 0002-0782/00/0700 $5.00
COMMUNICATIONS OF THE ACM July 2000/Vol. 43, No. 7 59