Hans Godard’s new tool uses machine learning for muscle deformation

Naughty Dog TD Hans Godard has released an impressive video demonstrating his research into a new technique to animate muscle and other kinds of mesh deformation using machine learning in Maya. The tool, named Muscle Training to Joint reconstruction (MTJ), requires a short sequence of input meshes from which it is able to identify the best joint locations, create a skinned mesh that matches the shape of the inputs, and create a rig from the joint locations that smoothly animates between the shapes. Watch it on Vimeo.