We present a framework for generating animated shadow art using occluders under ballistic motion. We apply a stochastic optimization to find the parameters of a multi-body physics simulation that produce a desired shadow at a specific instant in time. We perform simulations across many different initial conditions, applying a set of carefully crafted energy functions to evaluate the motion trajectory and multi-body shadows. We select the optimal parameters, resulting in a ballistics simulation that produces ephemeral shadow art. Users can design physically-plausible dynamic artwork that would be extremely challengingif even possible to achieve manually. We present and analyze a number of compelling examples.
BibTeX
@proceedings {ballisticshadows17,
author = {Chen, Xiaozhong and Andrews, Sheldon and Nowrouzezahrai, Derek and Kry, Paul G.},
title = {Ballistic shadow art},
booktitle = {Proceedings of Graphics Interface 2017},
series = {GI’17},
year = {2017},
publisher = {Canadian Human Computer Interaction Society}
}