Preloading and Precedence Lists for Smooth Playback 2004

[Martin Hash]

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For the First International Conference on Quality of Service in Heterogeneous Wired/Wireless Networks (QSHINE'04)
http://www.computer.org/portal/web/csdl ... NE.2004.40

ABSTRACT

No better, faster distribution mechanism exists on this planet than that provided by the non-commercial, public-accepted Internet. By embracing this technology and designing for its limitations and shortcomings, a truly revolutionary animation delivery system can be developed. It requires foundations in compression theory, component reuse, temporal maintenance, interactivity iconology, and aesthetics. Neglecting any one of these components would be detrimental, if not outright fatal, to achieving our goal. The tactics required to bring this vision are based more on concepts and strategy rather than implementation details. Luckily, the paramount requirement, the Internet itself, is flexible, robust, and ubiquitous enough to support our endeavor. Historically, bandwidth restrictions have precluded the transmission of high-quality, interactive 3D character animation. This paper specifically addresses the utilization of existing Internet technologies to achieve interactive character animation by implementing a new canon of animation abstractions, thereby increasing perceived fidelity while actually reducing the required bandwidth.

INTRODUCTION

There have been several commercial examples of animated 3D content on the Internet [][], but their weak conceptual foundations constrained their growth and acceptance, and they could not deliver an acceptable level of quality given the bandwidth restrictions, nor could they boast that anything dramatically better was on the horizon.

There are two sources of difficulty. First, of course, is the Internet transmission bandwidth. Even with extraordinary backbone transmission rates, the individual client rates available are quite restrictive. Second, to fit within the restricted bandwidth given existing modeling paradigms, animation content was customized to fit the prevailing “most common system”. Obviously, as client system speeds improved, the models quickly became dated. Such ad hoc schemes as progressive meshes [] are only stop-gap measures. Animation and modeling fidelity needs to be made independent of bandwidth.

To solve these difficulties, we accept the animation abstraction canon presented by [], and the modeling paradigm presented by [], then we match them with existing Internet technologies. In fact, interactive 3D character animation over the Internet seems impractical without a comprehensive canon of abstractions. Implementation caveats are discussed but not emphasized, except to use as cautions and to suggest future directions of browser development.

Importance loading for 3D character animation on the Internet.doc