Animal Modeling, Animation, and Motion Capture.

Since 1995 researchers at the Baskin School of Engineering at the University of California, Santa Cruz, have sought ways to use computers to model animal motion. This page traces the progress of these researchers as they have used more and more sophisticated techniques to account for every aspect of animal movement, down to the basic interactions of bone, muscle, and skin. This record of progress is a capsule history of computer graphics, of the interactions between computers and the life sciences, and a very cool archive of animations modeling animal and human movement. Some of the overviews of modeling problems and their solutions use quite sophisticated language, but this need not detract from an enjoyment of the site. Requires Quicktime to view animations.