Puppet animation with textured billboards

We present a system for key frame flat articulated puppet animation. We show the main user interface components and features specifically crafted for this type of animation. In particular, the puppet rigging system is designed for intuitive animation of flat articulated characters without explicitly defining a skeleton hierarchy. Useful features, including automatic in-betweening, inverse kinematics control and animation retargeting, make it easy to create a cutout animation. The system is built upon a game engine, effectively taking advantage of its 3D rendering engine, scene management system, graphical user interface, and allowing real time interaction with animations in final render quality.