Synthesis and Analysis Techniques for the Human Body: R&D Projects - 3D Modeling and Animation: Synthesis and Analysis Techniques for the Human Body - page 368

IMUTUS: Interactive Music Tutorial System
The main goal of the IMUTUS project (IST IMUTUS) is to provide an
interactive music tuition multimedia system for training users on traditional
instruments with no MIDI (Musical Instrument Digital Interface) output. The
selected instrument is the recorder. The system will be based on audio/optical
recognition, multimedia, virtual reality and audio-to-MIDI transformation tech-
nologies.
The most important aspect of IMUTUS in terms of human body analysis and
synthesis is the Movement Authoring tool (Figure 13), which is part of the
IMUTUS virtual reality module. A very important aspect in learning and
practicing with a musical instrument is the fingering technique used. The
movement of the hands and the positioning of the instrument between the lipsare
only two examples of the kinematics involved in learning to play music. In order
to support this learning aspect, the system will provide visual representations of
the movement of the fingers of a virtual teacher synchronized with the music
played. The teachers will have the opportunity to use a dedicated authoring tool
in order to visually record their movements and convert them to 3D representa-
tions. The reason for not using simple video is that with 3D representations the
learning user will have the possibility to freely navigate within the scenery and,
thus, observe the movement of the teacher from different viewpoints, zooming
in and out, and emphasizing aspects that he/she considers especially difficult
(i.e., the position of two fingers next to each other).
Figure 13. The modules of the author movement tool.