SMEAR: Stylized Motion Exaggeration With ARt-direction

Abstract

Smear frames are routinely used by artists for the expressive depiction of motion in animations. In this paper, we present an automatic, yet art-directable method for the generation of smear frames in 3D, with a focus on elongated in-betweens where an object is stretched along its trajectory. It takes as input a key-framed animation of a 3D mesh, and outputs a deformed version of this mesh for each frame of the animation, while providing for artistic refinement at the end of the animation process and prior to rendering.