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1. What is Skeletal Animation?
2. What is Skeletal Animation Technique Process
1. Skeleton
2. Rigging
3. Keyframes
4. Output
3. Advantages and Disadvantages of Skeletal
Animation
 Skeletal animation is a technique in computer
animation in which a character is represented
in two segments: a surface representation
used to draw the character (called skin or
mesh) and a hierarchical set of
interconnected bones (called the rig or
skeleton) used to animate (pose or keyframe)
the mesh.
 While this technique is often used to animate
humans or more commonly for organic
modelling, it only serves to make the
animation process more intuitive, and the
similar technique can be used to control the
deformation of any object a door, a spoon, a
building.
 When the animated object is more general
than for example a humanoid character the
set of bones may not be hierarchical or
interconnected, but it only represents the
higher level description of the motion of the
part of mesh or skin it is influencing.
 The skeleton is the most important object in
a skeletal animation Process.
 A skeleton is a set of bones that can be
hierarchically organized.
 Usually an object has some important joints.
 For instance, for a character, the most
important joints are the hip, the knee, the
neck, etc.
 Once a skeleton step is done next is rigging.
 In rigging place the bones exactly where they
would be in a real-world skeleton.
 Each defined bone must be connected to its
belonging part of the object being animated.
 In this way, the bones control in the final
movements.
 A keyframe in animation is a drawing that defines
the starting and ending points of a smooth
transition.
 A sequence of keyframes defines a series of
movements the viewer will see in the final
animation.
 To have a smooth transition between keyframes
other in-between ones are inserted.
 For obtaining a particular pose of the
character, you need to change the position of
the bones.
 It can be done by using geometric
transformations such as rotation, translation
and scaling.
 All skeletal animations have keyframes.
 Once the keyframes are set up, and the
animation looks good when playing into the
loop you are ready to use it anywhere.
1. The skeletal animation uses tools that make
the process of animation simpler.
2. Skeletal animation allows you to make
dynamic animations because you can
manipulate (translate, rotate, scale) all
character’s bones at runtime.
3. Bone-based animations are simpler when
you want to make multiple animations for
one character.
4. Skeletal animation requires a fewer image
and less memory.
5. Skeletal animation allows you to create a
natural movement with the help of inverse or
forward kinematics.
1. Skeletal animations are more complex.
2. Skeletal animations require more processor
time.
3. Skeletal animations have the impediment of
bone rigidity.
What is Skeletal Animation Technique?