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Computational Design of Mechanical Characters

DisneyResearchHub · 3.9M views · 2013-07-21 · 5:10

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Overview

A Disney Research SIGGRAPH 2013 demo of an interactive system that lets non-experts design animated mechanical characters. The user sketches motion curves and the system generates optimized mechanisms and gear trains for 3D printing.

On Hacker News

HN cites it as an example of computational mechanism design, especially in threads on gears, linkages and animatronics.

Recommended by 1 HN people across 1 months · HN mentions 2013–2025

Topics

Mechanical & precision engineering3D printing, CNC & maker projectsComputer graphics & rendering
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disney researchmechanismsgears3d printingsiggraph

What people said

0-_-0 · 2020-11 · Recommendation

Here's a good Siggraph 2013 demo about "Computational Design of Mechanical Characters" from Disney: [VIDEO]

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downboots · 2025-06 · Reference

Is there a standard way to formally describe a mechanical machine? Similar to how a .obj file defines a 3d shape? Some standard way of describing piece types, interactions, properties, movement ranges, etc. Then one could have a computer use the format to learn/find interesting configurations based on a catalog like [LINK] especially if paired with simulation like done in this Disney research project using gears and linkages [VIDEO]

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dfbrown · 2013-08 · Reference

This reminded me of a recent paper on automatically designing animated mechanical characters. Some of these movements could be used to incorporate different kinds of animations into these characters. [VIDEO]

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Sources

Video by DisneyResearchHub, played through YouTube.

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