As part of my MSc, I completed two small projects focussing on computer animation and visualisation.
The first of these focusses on forward kinematics for an arm model, involving the creation and playback of keyframe animations. Particular attention was given to the avoidance of joint collapse and “candy wrapper” effects as the arm was rotated at large angles; this was achieved by adding helper joints and limiting the rotation at each. The colours in the image demonstrate the influence which a given bone (including between helper joints) has over a particular vertex in the model.
The second project concerned visualisation of volumetric data. I created basic back-to-front and front-to-back raytracers which rendered the skin and skull from the point data. Normals were calculated both by finite difference and using a sobel filter, allowing diffuse and specular lighting effects to be applied.
