Character contact re-positioning under large environment deformation

International audienceCharacter animation based on motion capture provides intrinsically plausible results, but lacks the flexibility of proceduralmethods. Motion editing methods partially address this limitation by adapting the animation to small deformations of theenvironment. We extend one such method, the so-called relationship descriptors, to tackle the issue of motion editing under largeenvironment deformations. Large deformations often result in joint limits violation, loss of balance, or collisions. Our methodhandles these situations by automatically detecting and re-positioning invalidated contacts. The new contact configurations arechosen to preserve the mechanical properties of the original contacts in order to provide plausible support phases. When it isnot possible to find an equivalent contact, a procedural animation is generated and blended with the original motion. Thanksto an optimization scheme, the resulting motions are continuous and preserve the style of the reference motions. The method isfully interactive and enables the motion to be adapted on-line even in case of large changes of the environment. We demonstrateour method on several challenging scenarios, proving its immediate application to 3D animation softwares and video games