TimeTunnel Live: Recording and Editing Character Motion in Virtual Reality

Animating 3D characters requires extensive practice and learning to achieve realistic outcomes. To address this challenge, we present TimeTunnel Live, an animation authoring interface for recording and editing motion in Virtual Reality. TimeTunnel Live leverages the state-of-the-art tracking in Virtual Reality devices to capture a user’s body motion, facial expressions, and hand gestures through a simple recording function. To facilitate editing captured motion, we present an immersive motion editing interface that integrates spatial and temporal control for character animation. The system works by extracting keyposes from the 3D character animation and superimposing them along a timeline. The joints across the keyposes are connected through 3D trajectories to show a character’s movement. We implemented these techniques into a proof-of-concept prototype with a demonstration illustrating how one person can bring multiple characters to life in a ’one-man band’ animation. This system provides an interactive experience to explore the future of immersive animation technologies.