Creating stimuli for the study of biological-motion perception.
In the perception of biological motion, the stimulus information is confined to a small number of lights attached to the major joints of a moving person. Despite this drastic degradation of the stimulus information, the human visual apparatus organizes the swarm of moving dots into a vivid percept of a moving biological creature. Several techniques have been proposed to create point-light stimuli: placing dots at strategic locations on photographs or films, video recording a person with markers attached to the body, computer animation based on artificial synthesis, and computer animation based on motion-capture data. A description is given of the technique we are currently using in our laboratory to produce animated point-light figures. The technique is based on a combination of motion capture and three-dimensional animation software (Character Studio, Autodesk, Inc., 1998). Some of the advantages of our approach are that the same actions can be shown from any viewpoint, that point-light versions, as well as versions with a full-fleshed character, can be created of the same actions, and that point lights can indicate the center of a joint (thereby eliminating several disadvantages associated with other techniques).
Dekeyser
Mathias
M
University of Leuven, Tiensestraat 102, B-3000 Leuven, Belgium.
Verfaillie
Karl
K
Vanrie
Jan
J
D001695:Biology; D006801:Humans; D009039:Motion Perception; D009068:Movement / Q000502:physiology*; D012984:Software; D014743:Videotape Recording