Andrea Snyder, Director
National Initiative to Preserve America's Dance
The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts
Washington, DC 20566
(202) 416-8036
email: ASnyder@mail.kennedy-center.org
http://save-as-dance.org
>----------
>From: STUART JOSHUA MICHAEL[SMTP:stuartj@rintintin.Colorado.EDU]
>Sent: Thursday, April 02, 1998 4:40 PM
>To: Dance Technology List
>Subject: looking for *lots* of dance animations
>
>Hi everyone,
>
>Does anyone know where i can find gobs of LifeForms(TM) animations? We're
>working on software that "learns" what particular styles of dance
>look like and then tries to bridge two key frames with dance that matches
>the "genre" it's been trained on. In order to train
>the computer we need a large corpus of human movement that is an honest
>and (approximately) complete representation of how the body moves. We've
>already built a small corpus of ballet using the short sequences from
>LifeForms'
>PowerMoves CD that we purchased last semester. Although the CD has been
>extremely helpful in the beginning stages of the project it is still too
>small to meet our needs. For instance, even after training on every
>sequence we could get our hands on, there are still some "lock-states" the
>joints can enter. These lock-states are particular joint orientations the
>computer has never seen examples of how to exit.
>
>Right now, we're heavily using LifeForms and so are requesting animations in
>that format, but would also appreciate suggestions about other animation
>alternatives that are out there. Ideally, we would love to set up a motion
>capture system of some sort and let live dancers train the algorithms. We
>just
>don't know how affordable, how practical, and how reliable these motion
>capture
>systems are...
>
>Any pointers to existing animation archives or people that might be
>willing to contribute their own work to the cause would be greatly
>appreciated. Thanks!
>
>++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
>josh stuart
>professional research assistant
>dr. elizabeth bradley's lab
>department of computer science
>university of colorado
>stuartj@cs.colorado.edu
>(303) 492-8425
>++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
>
>