My colleagues, Daniele Panozzo, Oliver Glauser, Cedric Pradalier, Otmar Hilliges, Olga Sorkine-Hornung and I have just submitted the camera ready version of paper "Tangible and Modular Input Device for Character Articulation" to be presented at ACM SIGGRAPH 2014. I’ve put up a Tangible and Modular Input Device for Character Articulation page where you can find the preprint version of the article, videos and an OpenHardware description so you can build your own device!
Articulation of 3D characters requires control over many degrees of freedom: a difficult task with standard 2D interfaces. We present a tangible input device composed of interchangeable, hot-pluggable parts. Embedded sensors measure the device’s pose at rates suitable for real-time editing and animation. Splitter parts allow branching to accommodate any skeletal tree. During assembly, the device recognizes topological changes as individual parts or pre-assembled subtrees are plugged and unplugged. A novel semi-automatic registration approach helps the user quickly map the device’s degrees of freedom to a virtual skeleton inside the character. User studies report favorable comparisons to mouse and keyboard interfaces. Our device provides input for character rigging and automatic weight computation, direct skeletal deformation, interaction with physical simulations, and handle-based variational geometric modeling.