Enveloping, or the mapping of skeletal controls to the deformations
of a surface, is key to driving realistic animated characters. Despite
its widespread use, enveloping still relies on slow or inaccurate deformation methods. We propose a method that is both fast, accurate
and example-based. Our technique introduces a rotational regression
model that captures common skinning deformations such as
muscle bulging, twisting, and challenging areas such as the shoulders.
Our improved treatment of rotational quantities is made practical
by model reduction that ensures real-time solution of leastsquares
problems, independent of the mesh size. Our method is
significantly more accurate than linear blend skinning and almost
as fast, suggesting its use as a replacement for linear blend skinning
when examples are available.
