Footskate cleanup for motion capture editing

Abstract

While motion capture is commonplace in character animation, often the raw motion data itself is not used. Rather, it is first fit onto a skeleton and then edited to satisfy the particular demands of the animation. This process can introduce artifacts into the motion. One particularly distracting artifact is when the character's feet move when they ought to remain planted, a condition known as footskate. In this paper we present a simple, efficient algorithm for removing footskate. Our algorithm exactly satisfies footplant constraints without introducing disagreeable artifacts.