Skeleton-based and cage-based deformation techniques represent the two most popular approaches to control real-time deformations of digital shapes and are, to a vast extent, complementary to one another. Despite their complementary roles, high-end modeling packages do not allow for seamless integration of such control structures, thus inducing a considerable burden on the user to maintain them synchronized. In this paper, we propose a framework that seamlessly combines rigging skeletons and deformation cages, granting artists with a real-time deformation system that operates using any smooth combination of the two approaches. By coupling the deformation spaces of cages and skeletons, we access a much larger space, containing poses that are impossible to obtain by acting solely on a skeleton or a cage. Our method is oblivious to the specific techniques used to perform skinning and cage-based deformation, securing it compatible with pre-existing tools. We demonstrate the usefulness of our hybrid approach on a variety of examples.
@article{arxiv.1909.02807,
title = {Real-time Deformation with Coupled Cages and Skeletons},
author = {Fabrizio Corda and Jean-Marc Thiery and Marco Livesu and Enrico Puppo and Tamy Boubekeur and Riccardo Scateni},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1909.02807},
year = {2019}
}