Character modeling and animation

Character lines, skeletons, deformations, muscles, skin... the art of character setup leaves an animator unencumbered,  like a puppeteer, to focus on the formidable task of bringing a character to life.

 

Faces 

Expressive Facial Modeling and Animation (Keynote ACM Symposium on Computer Animation SCA 2024)

Facial Modeling and Animation (Keynote ACM Motion in Games 2019)

Research is a start-up focused on audio-driven tools for expressive animated storytelling.

Model See Model Do: Speech-Driven Facial Animation with Style Control Yifang Pan, Karan Singh, Luiz Gustavo Hafemann SIGGRAPH 2025 Paper Project Head-EyeK: Head-eye Coordination and Control Learned in Virtual Reality Yifang Pan, Ludwig Sidenmark, Karan Singh IEEE TVCG 2025 Paper Project S3: Speech, Script and Scene driven Head and Eye Animation Yifang Pan, Rishabh Agrawal, Karan Singh ACM Transactions on Graphics (TOG), presented at SIGGRAPH 2024 Paper Project Animatomy: an Animator-centric, Anatomically Inspired System for 3D Facial Modeling, Animation and Transfer Byungkuk Choi, Haekwang Eom, Benjamin Mouscadet, Stephen Cullingford, Kurt Ma, Stefanie Gassel, Suzi Kim, Andrew Moffat, Millicent Maier, Marco Revelant, Joe Letteri, Karan Singh ACM SIGGRAPH Asia 2022 Paper Project page VOCAL: Vowel and Consonant Layering for Expressive Animator-Centric Singing Animation Yifang Pan, Chris Landreth, Eugene Fiume and Karan Singh ACM SIGGRAPH Asia 2022 Paper Project page Optimizing UI Layouts for Deformable Face-Rig Manipulation Joonho Kim and Karan Singh ACM SIGGRAPH 2021 Paper Project page Interactive Modelling of Volumetric Musculoskeletal Anatomy Rinat Abdrashitov, Seungbae Bang, David I.W. Levin, Karan Singh, Alec Jacobson ACM SIGGRAPH 2021 Project Page Interactive Exploration and Refinement of Facial Expression using Manifold Learning. Rinat Abdrashitov, Fanny Chevalier, Karan Singh ACM UIST 2020. Paper | Video | Project JALI-Driven Expressive Facial Animation and Multi-lingual Speech in Cyberpunk 2077. P. Edwards, C. Landreth, R. Malinowski, M. Poplawski, E. Fiume, S. Watling, K.Singh ACM SIGGRAPH 2020 Presentation page A System for Efficient 3D Printed Stop-Motion Face Animation Rinat Abdrashitov, Alec Jacobson, Karan Singh ACM Transactions on Graphics 2020 (SIGGRAPH 2020) Paper | Paper (low res) | Project Page Visemenet: audio-driven animator-centric speech animation Zhan Xu, Yang Zhou, Evangelos Kalogerakis, Karan Singh ACM SIGGRAPH 2018. [Paper] [Video] JALI: An Animator-Centric Viseme Model for Expressive Lip-Synchronization Pif Edwards, Chris Landreth, Eugene Fiume, Karan Singh ACM Transactions on Graphics, SIGGRAPH 2016 [PDF][Video][Details] Wires: A geometric deformation technique Karan Singh, Eugene Fiume (ACM SIGGRAPH 98) [Paper] [Video]

Image Copyright: Chris Landreth and JALI Research Inc.

 

Bodies

Face Extrusion Quad Meshes Karran Pandey, J. Andreas Bærentzen, Karan Singh ACM SIGGRAPH 2022 Paper Project RigNet: Neural Rigging for Articulated Characters. Zhan Xu, Yang Zhou, Evangelos Kalogerakis, Chris Landreth, Karan Singh ACM Transactions on Graphics, Vol. 39, 2020 (SIGGRAPH 2020) Paper, Video, Project Page (code, data and more) Predicting Animation Skeletons for 3D Articulated Models via Volumetric Nets. Zhan Xu, Yang Zhou, Evangelos Kalogerakis, Karan Singh Proc. of the International Conference on 3D Vision (3DV) 2019.  (Oral Pres.) Paper | Project Page (code, data and more) Inverse Kinodynamics: Editing and Constraining Kinematic Approximations of Dynamic Motion. Cyrus Rahgoshay, Amir Rabbani, Karan Singh, Paul Kry. Graphics Interface 2012, (Best Paper Award) Paper | Video | Project Finger Walking: Motion Editing with Contact-Based Hand Performance. Noah Lockwood, Karan Singh ACM/EG SCA 2012 Paper | Video | Project Learning 3D Mesh Segmentation and Labeling. E. Kalogerakis, A. Hertzmann, K. Singh ACM Transactions on Graphics, Vol. 29, No. 3, July SIGGRAPH 2010. Paper | Project Biomechanically-Inspired Motion Path Editing. Noah Lockwood, Karan Singh. ACM/EG SCA 2011 Paper | Video | Project Staggered Poses: A Character Motion Representation for Detail-Preserving Editing of Pose and Coordinated Timing. P. Coleman, J. Bibliowicz, K. Singh, M. Gleicher. ACM/EG SCA 2008. Project | Paper | Video Kinodynamic skinning using volume-preserving deformations Alexis Angelidis, Karan Singh ACM/EG SCA 2007 Paper | Video Best Paper award. Predictive Feedback for Interactive Control of Physics-based Characters J. Laszlo, M. Neff, K. Singh Eurographics 2005 Paper | Video Outside-In Anatomy Based Character Rigging ichael Pratscher, Patrick Coleman, Joe Laszlo, and Karan Singh ACM/EG SCA 2005 Paper | Video | Project Helping Hand: An Anatomically Accurate Inverse Dynamics Solution For Unconstrained Hand Motion W. Tsang, E. Fume, K. Singh  ACM/EG SCA 05 Paper | Video Ryan National Film Board of Canada Oscar Animated Short 2004. Layered Dynamic Control for Interactive Character Swimming P. Yang, J. Laszlo, K. Singh ACM/EG SCA 2004.  Paper | Video | Project Handrix: Animating the Human Hand (pp 110-119 SCA 03) George ElKoura, Karan Singh ACM/EG SCA 2003. Skinning Characters using Surface Oriented Free-Form Deformations Karan Singh, Vangelis Kokkevis (GI 00). Bingo Genie, SIGGRAPH ET award 1998 Realistic Human Figure Synthesis and Animation for Virtual Reality Applications Karan Singh (Ph.D. Dissertation, OSU 95). Human Figure Synthesis and Animation for Virtual Space Teleconferencing K. Singh, J. Ohya, R. Parent. IEEE VRAIS 1995, 118-126.

Graphics Interface 2000 cover. Wrap Deformer (image: Paul Thuriot).