A Tangible Interface using 3D Printed Figures for Searching for Combat Motions of Two Characters

In this paper, we propose a tangible interface using three-dimensional (3D) printed figures to search for the combat motion of two characters, which consist of an attacking motion of one character and the associated defending or avoiding motion of the other character. A key idea is that such combat motion can be identified by the key poses of two characters and spatial relationship between them at the moment of the impact of the attack. Another key idea is that the poses and their spatial relationship can be specified for searching for combat motions by arranging 3D figures of the key poses on a stage. A user of our system can easily search for the combat motion of two characters from a motion database by choosing and arranging the 3D figures. We developed a method for searching for the desired pair of motion from the motion database based on user input. We implemented a prototype to evaluate our approach and conducted a user study to show the effectiveness of our interface by comparing it with a conventional graphical user interface for specifying the same information.