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Computational Design of Mechanical Characters

DisneyResearchHub1 HN recommenders · 2013–2025
3.9M views · demo · evergreen · Uploaded 2013-07-21

A Disney Research SIGGRAPH 2013 demo of an interactive system that lets non-experts design animated mechanical characters. The user sketches motion curves and the system generates optimized mechanisms and gear trains for 3D printing.

HN cites it as an example of computational mechanism design, especially in threads on gears, linkages and animatronics.

Mechanical & precision engineering3D printing, CNC & maker projectsComputer graphics & rendering

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3 comments from Hacker News

@dfbrown2013 · in “Five Hundred and Seven Mechanical Movements”

This reminded me of a recent paper on automatically designing animated mechanical characters. Some of these movements could be used to incorporate different kinds of animations into these characters. [VIDEO]

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@0-_-02020 · in “Disney unveiled an animatronic robot with the same gaze as humans”

Here's a good Siggraph 2013 demo about "Computational Design of Mechanical Characters" from Disney: [VIDEO]

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@downboots2025 · in “Expanding Racks [video]”

Is there a standard way to formally describe a mechanical machine? Similar to how a .obj file defines a 3d shape? Some standard way of describing piece types, interactions, properties, movement ranges, etc. Then one could have a computer use the format to learn/find interesting configurations based on a catalog like [LINK] especially if paired with simulation like done in this Disney research project using gears and linkages [VIDEO]

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