Animation Lab: Vaulting



Vaulting

Handspring Vault. MPEG (445K) or QT (1.0M)
Yamashita Vault. MPEG (1.3M) or QT (2.5M)
Landing Closeup. MPEG (1.3M) or QT (2.5M)

To perform a vault, a gymnast uses a spring board to launch herself toward the vaulting horse, pushes off the horse with her hands, and lands on her feet on the other side of the horse. The vault described here, a handspring vault, is an over-swing vault in which the gymnast performs a full somersault over the horse while keeping her body extended in a layout position. This vault is structured by a state machine with seven states: approach, hurdle step, jump, first flight, thrust, second flight, and landing. The animation of the handspring vault begins during the flight phase following the hurdle step and preceding the jump on the springboard. The initial conditions are estimated from video footage (forward velocity is 6.7m/s and the height of the center of mass is 0.9m).

In the footage showing the closeup of the landing, we have added a compressible mat to the simulation. The mat is modeled as a vertical spring that exerts forces on the feet of the vaulter. After the vaulter's motion is simulated using this simple model of the mat, the motion of the feet is used to drive a more realistic simulation of a flexible mat.

Publications

Hodgins, J. K., Wooten, W. L., Brogan, D. C., O'Brien, J. F., (1995) Animating Human Athletics. Siggraph '95.

Project Members

Jessica K. Hodgins (Faculty Advisor)

jkh@cc.gatech.edu

Wayne Wooten

wlw@cc.gatech.edu

Victor Zordan

victor@cc.gatech.edu

Questions or comments? Email jkh+www@cc.gatech.edu.