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Generating labanotation from motion-captured human body motion data Toshiro Matsumoto, Kozaburo Hachimura Department of Computer Science Ritsumeikan University, Kusatsu, Shiga Japan Minako Nakamura Tokyo Institute of Technology Tokyo Japan Abstract By using a motion capture system we can measure and record human body motion like ballet, dance or other performing arts. The data obtainedby the system are very accurate, but the volume of the data is very large. E_cient handling and management of the motion captured data are desired. This paper describes a method of converting motion-captured data into dance notation called Labanotation, which is well known among Western dance communities. Although the description by Labanotation is not necessarily accurate, it is compact and powerful enough to describe the overall body motion of dance and other intangible cultural properties. An example of the result of processing is shown. 3D CG character animation has been produced from converted Labanotation data. The Labanotation data produced from motion capture data may also be used as an index for the archives of motion data. Introduction Today, motion capture systems have been used for measuring human body motion in the _eld of CG-animation and movie production. The system can also be applied to recording and archiving intangible cultural properties like dance and other performing arts. We can obtain accurate 3-dimensional position data during body motion. However, it is still an open issue how to generate a compact description of body motion like the one expressed as \raising arms" etc . The method of dance notation called Labanotation, which was devised by Rudolf Laban in the early 20th century, has been used in recording body motions of ballet and dance[1]. Of course Labanotation is originally paper-based and was not intended to be computerized. Moreover, the notation is not necessarily accurate. However, it is easy for us to roughly grasp the body motion by browsing the score. A role of Labanotation for motion captured data is just the same as the role of the music score for music performance. Multimedia technology has already been introduced for preparing and editing Labanotation score[2, 3], and it was proved useful for choreography and dance education. This paper describes a method to generate data corresponding to Labanotation from those obtained by motion capture systems. Motion Capturing Motion capture is a technique for measuring the motion of a multiply-linked rigid object like human body. Several techniques have been devised, but we use an optical system, inwhich several markers are attached to the appropriate positions on the surface of subject human body and the 3-dimensional positions of markers are algorithmically determined from images captured by several, say 6 to 10, video cameras (Figure 1).  Figure 1: Motion capturing The position of a marker does not necessarily represent the position of a joint of the human body, which is essential for analyzing and reproducing human body motion. The position of a joint is estimated by a software from the position of several markers around it. We can get this kind of motion data which corresponds to the calculated joint position. We use about 30 markers in measuring a motion, and we get 20 joint positions, which are shown in Figure 2.  Figure 2: Joints of the body model
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