Computer scientists at the University of Bath have developed a new way of making life-like animations of trees using video footage of the real thing. This technique could be used by animators and computer games designers to automatically generate realistic trees that move in a natural way. <\/p>\n
Most computer games and animations have a static background, or use a large team of animators to painstakingly draw each tree individually. <\/p>\n
Dr Peter Hall and Chris Li, of the University’s Department of Computer Science, have developed a program that will let the computer -watch video footage of a tree to enable it to make computer-animations that mimic the way branches and leaves move in the wind. <\/p>\n
The user simply has to draw around the tree outline in the first frame of the video. The program then makes a model of the tree and tracks how the leaves and branches move in the video. <\/p>\n