Development of Easy-to-Use Authoring System for Noh (Japanese Traditional) Dance Animation

Noh is a genre of Japanese traditional theater, a kind of musical drama. Similar to other dance forms, Noh dance (shimai) can also be divided into small, discrete units of motion (shosa). Therefore, if we have a set of motion clips of motion units (shosa), we can synthesize Noh dance animation by composing them in a sequence based on the Noh dance notation (katatsuke). However, it is difficult for researchers, learners, and teachers of Noh dance to utilize existing animation systems to create such animations of Noh dance. The purpose of this research is to develop an easy-to-use authoring system for Noh dance animation. In this paper, we introduce the design, implementation and evaluation of our system. To solve the problems of existing animation systems, we employ our smart motion synthesis technique to compose motion units automatically. We classify motion units as either pattern or locomotion units. Pattern units are specific forms of motion and can be represented as shot motion clips, whereas locomotion ones denote movement towards a specific position or direction and must be generated on the fly. To deal with locomotion-type motion units, we implemented a module to generate walking motion based on a given path. We created several Noh dance animations using this system, which was evaluated through a series of experiments.