CG animation for piano performance

Abstract

Technologies recreating piano performance in the form of CG animation are eagerly anticipated by people working in various fields, such as content production, music education, etc. Nonetheless, much of the past research has dealt with the mechanical finger movements in piano practice support systems and performance support GUIs, etc. and there has been little research recreating the reality of finger movements. We are promoting research into the analysis and CG expression of realistic and natural piano fingering. This paper describes the following aspects of this research program: (i) measurement of piano fingering using motion capture technology, (ii) generation of a CG animation of fingering using offline/realtime rendering, and (iii) automatic generation of fingering using optimized algorithms. And finally we will introduce examples in which the fingering data created in (i) is used in TV animation.