A good user experience is crucial for the success of an application, and as our tools improve, we need to adapt our interfaces to fit the needs of both our users and new features.

The Animics pipeline has experienced notable improvements in its user interface, aimed at easing the recording of videos as well as the edition of its animations. Users may now record themselves and upload videos and BioVision Hierarchy (BVH) files at any time during their session, without requiring opening multiple instances of the application.

General media or self-recorded videos may contain undesired elements that may interfere in the generation of the final output. Thus, Animics now features a cropping tool with which to adjust the area of influence of the video for the automatic animation inference. Hence, no video needs to be preprocessed with external tools to make it suitable for the pipeline.

These progresses, although they improve the overall fidelity of the resulting animation, do not completely eliminate the inherent inaccuracies of machine learning (ML) approaches. In this regard, Animics integrates an automatic smoothing so as to mitigate the jittering (shaking) of the resulting animation. Furthermore, an edition propagation window is now available during edition, allowing for a rapid modification of neighbouring keyframes through a user-defined propagation curve. These new additions are aimed at increasing the quality of the resulting animations while further reducing the amount of work the user might need to achieve it.

On the other hand, Performs, the sister application of Animics intended for displaying keyframe and scripted animations in a more lightweight and adjustable manner, also received major updates. The user interface has been redesigned to better group available features and make them more intuitive. New display features such as user-defined backgrounds through uploaded images and adjustable lighting conditions are aimed at enhancing the generation of datasets within the applications.

Overall, these new changes have substantially enhanced the usability of both Performs and Animics through their user interface. Nonetheless, there is always room for improvement and, indeed, the team is already working towards making them more accessible and practical. That is why we are always eager to get feedback from users. Do not hesitate to try out our applications and let us know your experience with them!