2/14 Optimal Gait and Form for Animal Locomotion

This class we looked more at using optimization functions to control character motion. I thought it was pretty cool that the functions worked decently for all different sorts of characters: one legged, two legged, four legged with dog proportions, four legged with giraffe proportions, even five legged. Things like this are really useful - one method and one function that works for any sort of character. What I don't like is that it seems like so much trial and error. Randomly changing weights in the objective function until it "looks" right... I don't know of a better way to do it, but I wish there was one. It's like there's so much thought put into the different terms in the objective function, but the weights are completely arbitrary.