ABSTRACT
This chapter starts with an introduction to the most commonly used approach to 3D computer animation, i.e., keyframe in-betweening (tweening). It shows how this is used for the animation of rigid body behavior and illustrates possibilities for the extension of the keyframe approach to cover the more complex topic of character animation. Following the discussion on character animation we will proceed with an explanation of a technique often used for character animation, namely inverse kinematics or IK for short. IK has applications in non-character animation but it is probably its association with articulated models (i.e., characters) that animators would find it most useful. Finally there is a discussion and a few examples of aspects of the simulation of realistic motion that arise from some basic physical laws.
