College of Engineering News
Michael Neff, assistant professor in the Department of Computer Science
Neff Receives CAREER Award For Research in Computer Animation
Posted on: October 6, 2009
Michael Neff, assistant professor in the Department of Computer Science, has received a National Science Foundation (NSF) CAREER Award—$581,276 over five years—for his project titled “Generative Models for Character Animation and Gesture in the New Age of Art and Electronic Interaction.”
NSF CAREER Awards recognize and support promising junior faculty who exemplify the role of teacher-scholar through excellent education, outstanding research and the integration of education and research within the context of the mission of their organizations. The funds help to support graduate students in the recipient’s research laboratory.
Neff’s research focuses on creating better computer tools for character animation, allowing finer control over movement and more expressive renderings of mood, emotion and personality. “These tools will allow us to show more of a character’s personal movement style, their movement signature, emotion, even different shades of emotion,” he says.
At McMaster University where he completed his bachelor’s degree, Neff studied computer engineering, drama, and the social and environmental impacts of technology. He went on to earn his master’s and doctoral degrees at the University of Toronto. Neff holds a joint appointment in computer science and technocultural studies at UC Davis and operates a motion capture studio on campus where an optical system records the nuances of live performers’ movements. The resulting data is analyzed and mapped to create programs that automate gesture and give animators much finer control over a character’s movement.
Neff’s research will also explore gesture animation for applications where the human animator cannot be part of the process—virtual worlds in which characters interact with human avatars under the control of the computer. Another aspect of the work will involve using movement as input, enabling people to use their bodies to create animations in 3-D. “Compare it to using a mouse,” Neff explains. “While a mouse only allows you two degrees of freedom on a desk, this system would give many degrees of freedom as you’re moving widgets through space, drawing, sculpting and animating.”
Recently Neff became a Certified Laban/Bartenieff Movement Analyst (CLMA), after two years of study with Integrated Movement Studies. Laban Movement Analysis provides a framework for observing, analyzing and describing human movement.