AniCraft: Crafting Everyday Objects as Physical Proxies for Prototyping 3D Character Animation in Mixed Reality

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We introduce AniCraft, a mixed reality system for prototyping 3D character animation using physical proxies crafted from everyday objects. Unlike existing methods that require specialized equipment to support the use of physical proxies, AniCraft only requires affordable markers, webcams, and daily accessible objects and materials. AniCraft allows creators to prototype character animations through three key stages: selection of virtual characters, fabrication of physical proxies, and manipulation of these proxies to animate the characters. This authoring workflow is underpinned by diverse physical proxies, manipulation types, and mapping strategies, which ease the process of posing virtual characters and mapping user interactions with physical proxies to animated movements of virtual characters. We provide a range of cases and potential applications to demonstrate how diverse physical proxies can inspire user creativity. User experiments show that our system can outperform traditional animation methods for rapid prototyping. Furthermore, we provide insights into the benefits and usage patterns of different materials, which lead to design implications for future research.