{"id":3032,"date":"2014-12-22T16:58:03","date_gmt":"2014-12-22T21:58:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/engineering.jhu.edu\/magazine-archive\/?p=3032"},"modified":"2014-12-22T16:58:03","modified_gmt":"2014-12-22T21:58:03","slug":"move-flipper","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/engineering.jhu.edu\/magazine-archive\/2014\/12\/move-flipper\/","title":{"rendered":"Move over, Flipper!"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Flipper<\/a>By the time Omar Ahmad \u201999, PhD \u201911, came to the Whiting School to pursue his doctoral degree in 2006\u2014a homecoming of sorts, since he\u2019d also completed his undergraduate degree here \u2014he\u2019d been tinkering with physics-driven character animation for years. But to Ahmad, his and others\u2019 animations never looked quite right. The characters\u2019 actions seemed stilted and unnatural, keeping viewers from ever truly feeling like they could engender the illusion of life.<\/p>\n

While working out at Johns Hopkins\u2019 recreation center one day, Ahmad had an epiphany. Watching a bird alight on a branch outside, he realized that the approach used by the vast majority of scientists studying procedural animation\u2014involving complex optimizations designed to cover millions of different outcomes of an animated character\u2019s movement\u2014wasn\u2019t necessary to make visceral and lifelike animations.<\/p>\n

\u201cMaking realistic movement was much more simple and elegant than people have thought,\u201d Ahmad says.<\/p>\n