

Computational Bodybuilding: Anatomically-Based Modeling of Human Bodies - jcr
http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?doid=2809654.2766957

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sigmar
This seems pretty crude. Particularly in that it ignores visceral fat
entirely. Seems like a huge sacrifice in the accuracy of the output. The only
acceptable application I could think of for a model with this level of detail
would be for EA's "The Sims" game.

~~~
jabberbyte
They did acknowledge everything you mentioned in part (5). Not sure why you
feel the need make this comment.

~~~
shawn-furyan
Meta discussion is one of the core strengths of HN comments. If the GP felt
that this was the most important takeaway from the article, then it's good
that s/he didn't force others to read 9 dense pages of prose in order to gain
exposure to the idea. And really, the title mentioning bodybuilding implies
that this is a practical model. The GP is pointing out that it probably isn't.

~~~
jcr
You are not seeing this situation clearly.

The research presented is useful for far more than models for the "EA Sims
game" as was disparagingly claimed. The title is also fitting since the
methods presented are applicable to quickly building practical models of
bodybuilding. Though the modeling of visceral/organ fat is specifically
excluded for further research, the fat modeling methods presented are both
effective and useful for model generation. Their use of a quasi-static solver
("Projective Dynamics") on both their muscle and fat tissue growth modeling to
get "near-interactive" run times is particularly impressive. The single
paragraph "conclusion" section of the paper shows the paper holds interesting,
useful, and innovative research:

> _" To our knowledge, our work is the first to simulate physics-based growth
> processes of human tissues in computer graphics. We believe that our system
> will be instrumental in reducing the often prohibitive costs of human body
> modeling and will find applications even beyond the traditional realms of
> computer graphics, such as film, games, and visual effects."_

Of course, a lot of people won't have the time to read a long academic paper,
so comment quantity and quality often suffers on submissions of academic
works, but there's a problem here that you seem to be missing.

The comment by 'sigmar' is actually just another example of the long standing
"mean and/or dumb" comment problem on HN [1]. The comment is both factually
wrong and unnecessarily derogatory. That comment should have been at least
down-voted, and possibly even flagged, rather than defended as some imaginary
"core strength" of HN.

The phrase "mean and/or dumb" is from PG, but it's a old and common problem
affecting most discussion forums. Manipulative people regularly make failed
attempts to look smart in public discussions by being excessively negative,
and sadly, it tends to work in so much as lots of other people are fooled into
up-voting them. Anyone can be a totally uninformed and acrimonious critic, and
unfortunately, most human beings are complete suckers for controversy, so the
"mean and/or dumb but massively up-voted" comment problem tends to be self-
reinforcing. The only good news is, both the bad commenters and the bad up-
voters are quietly handled in code [2].

When you see the "mean and/or dumb" comments, or even the excessively negative
comments, you should down-vote them since they are against the site guidelines
[3, 4]. When a comment is particularly egregious, click the "X hours ago" link
on the comment, and then the 'flag' link (if it's available). Like the down-
vote privilege, the flag privilege also has a karma threshold to prevent
abuse.

When you realize how the excessively negative comments are really just trying
to seek attention, you understand they are just another form of trolling. In
this case, 'sigmar' is doing simple drive-by-trolling; say something as
offensive as possible to get attention, and refuse to back it up with
references when questioned about it. Yep, you got trolled. But I hope you'll
try to look for this sort of negative nonsense in the future, and down-
vote/flag it appropriately.

[1]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2403696](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2403696)

[2]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html)

[3]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

[4]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9317916](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9317916)

~~~
shawn-furyan
There is trolling happening here, however, it's not coming from sigmar who
offered a terse criticism and moved on. In that light, this will be my final
post on this thread.

~~~
jcr
I put in the effort to disagree with you politely and provide a detailed
explanation with references. Though it seems you've written off my response as
trolling, I hope you remember and reconsider it. You'll be better off in the
long run if you do.

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thirru
Wow, that's some great research there. We are actually building a scale for
consumers that will allow for body scans in 3D. We hope then to also later
integrate morphing algorithms so that you can see how your body would
transform if you were to gain extra muscles and fat. Potentially big data
could also help.

As for the visceral fat, it's indeed there, but an MRI could probably help
off-set such, if you wanted to have a high level of accuracy.

For most I believe outside fat will be most important.

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btparker
Great title.

