5,119 research outputs found
Capture, Learning, and Synthesis of 3D Speaking Styles
Audio-driven 3D facial animation has been widely explored, but achieving
realistic, human-like performance is still unsolved. This is due to the lack of
available 3D datasets, models, and standard evaluation metrics. To address
this, we introduce a unique 4D face dataset with about 29 minutes of 4D scans
captured at 60 fps and synchronized audio from 12 speakers. We then train a
neural network on our dataset that factors identity from facial motion. The
learned model, VOCA (Voice Operated Character Animation) takes any speech
signal as input - even speech in languages other than English - and
realistically animates a wide range of adult faces. Conditioning on subject
labels during training allows the model to learn a variety of realistic
speaking styles. VOCA also provides animator controls to alter speaking style,
identity-dependent facial shape, and pose (i.e. head, jaw, and eyeball
rotations) during animation. To our knowledge, VOCA is the only realistic 3D
facial animation model that is readily applicable to unseen subjects without
retargeting. This makes VOCA suitable for tasks like in-game video, virtual
reality avatars, or any scenario in which the speaker, speech, or language is
not known in advance. We make the dataset and model available for research
purposes at http://voca.is.tue.mpg.de.Comment: To appear in CVPR 201
Feeling crowded yet?: Crowd simulations for VR
With advances in virtual reality technology and its multiple applications, the need for believable, immersive virtual environments is increasing. Even though current computer graphics methods allow us to develop highly realistic virtual worlds, the main element failing to enhance presence is autonomous groups of human inhabitants. A great
number of crowd simulation techniques have emerged in the last decade, but critical details in the crowd's movements and appearance do not meet the standards necessary to convince VR participants that they are present in a real crowd. In this paper, we review recent advances in the creation of immersive virtual crowds and discuss areas that require further work to turn these simulations into more fully immersive and believable experiences.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft
A survey of real-time crowd rendering
In this survey we review, classify and compare existing approaches for real-time crowd rendering. We first overview character animation techniques, as they are highly tied to crowd rendering performance, and then we analyze the state of the art in crowd rendering. We discuss different representations for level-of-detail (LoD) rendering of animated characters, including polygon-based, point-based, and image-based techniques, and review different criteria for runtime LoD selection. Besides LoD approaches, we review classic acceleration schemes, such as frustum culling and occlusion culling, and describe how they can be adapted to handle crowds of animated characters. We also discuss specific acceleration techniques for crowd rendering, such as primitive pseudo-instancing, palette skinning, and dynamic key-pose caching, which benefit from current graphics hardware. We also address other factors affecting performance and realism of crowds such as lighting, shadowing, clothing and variability. Finally we provide an exhaustive comparison of the most relevant approaches in the field.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft
HeadOn: Real-time Reenactment of Human Portrait Videos
We propose HeadOn, the first real-time source-to-target reenactment approach
for complete human portrait videos that enables transfer of torso and head
motion, face expression, and eye gaze. Given a short RGB-D video of the target
actor, we automatically construct a personalized geometry proxy that embeds a
parametric head, eye, and kinematic torso model. A novel real-time reenactment
algorithm employs this proxy to photo-realistically map the captured motion
from the source actor to the target actor. On top of the coarse geometric
proxy, we propose a video-based rendering technique that composites the
modified target portrait video via view- and pose-dependent texturing, and
creates photo-realistic imagery of the target actor under novel torso and head
poses, facial expressions, and gaze directions. To this end, we propose a
robust tracking of the face and torso of the source actor. We extensively
evaluate our approach and show significant improvements in enabling much
greater flexibility in creating realistic reenacted output videos.Comment: Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Dg49wv2c_g Presented at
Siggraph'1
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