FDLS: A Deep Learning Approach to Production Quality, Controllable, and Retargetable Facial Performances

Visual effects commonly requires both the creation of realistic synthetic humans as well as retargeting actors' performances to humanoid characters such as aliens and monsters. Achieving the expressive performances demanded in entertainment requires manipulating complex models with hundreds of parameters. Full creative control requires the freedom to make edits at any stage of the production, which prohibits the use of a fully automatic ``black box'' solution with uninterpretable parameters. On the other hand, producing realistic animation with these sophisticated models is difficult and laborious. This paper describes FDLS (Facial Deep Learning Solver), which is Weta Digital's solution to these challenges. FDLS adopts a coarse-to-fine and human-in-the-loop strategy, allowing a solved performance to be verified and edited at several stages in the solving process. To train FDLS, we first transform the raw motion-captured data into robust graph features. Secondly, based on the observation that the artists typically finalize the jaw pass animation before proceeding to finer detail, we solve for the jaw motion first and predict fine expressions with region-based networks conditioned on the jaw position. Finally, artists can optionally invoke a non-linear finetuning process on top of the FDLS solution to follow the motion-captured virtual markers as closely as possible. FDLS supports editing if needed to improve the results of the deep learning solution and it can handle small daily changes in the actor's face shape. FDLS permits reliable and production-quality performance solving with minimal training and little or no manual effort in many cases, while also allowing the solve to be guided and edited in unusual and difficult cases. The system has been under development for several years and has been used in major movies.Comment: DigiPro '22: The Digital Production Symposiu

Participatory analytics for transport decision-making

This thesis investigates the design and evaluation of several software platforms that facilitate participatory outcomes in transport decision-making across operational, local and strategic scales. These platforms act as instruments to explore aspects of the research question: "How can urban dashboards be contextualised, designed & evaluated in a way that is sensitive to the changing role of digital democracy, immersive technologies and the increasingly collaborative nature of planning?". The concept of participatory urban dashboards is introduced, followed by process of participatory analytics. This process involves bringing more people on board with both using the dashboard (e.g., together or collaboratively) and allowing a more general audience of citizens or stakeholders to make sense and validate what is displayed. The research is applied to the city of Sydney, Australia. Sydney is a growing, global city with a wide variety of transport infrastructure ambitions and a strong, open-data ecosystem. Sydney’s transport system underpins the case studies of the operational, local and strategic digital artefacts assessed in this research. Participatory analytics outcomes as a result of interacting with these digital prototypes are evaluated. This will, in turn, help direct research and real-life applications and development of these tools. Further, it aims to build on research gap calling for further understanding of context-specific, user-centric design and evaluation of these participatory analytics tools

Design revolutions: IASDR 2019 Conference Proceedings. Volume 4: Learning, Technology, Thinking

In September 2019 Manchester School of Art at Manchester Metropolitan University was honoured to host the bi-annual conference of the International Association of Societies of Design Research (IASDR) under the unifying theme of DESIGN REVOLUTIONS. This was the first time the conference had been held in the UK. Through key research themes across nine conference tracks – Change, Learning, Living, Making, People, Technology, Thinking, Value and Voices – the conference opened up compelling, meaningful and radical dialogue of the role of design in addressing societal and organisational challenges. This Volume 4 includes papers from Learning, Technology and Thinking tracks of the conference

Da imersão à criação : cartografando experiências estéticas de estudantes com a realidade virtual

A Realidade Virtual (RV) vem sendo bastante explorada no âmbito da educação no Brasil e no mundo, sendo o seu uso intensificado a partir da pandemia da Covid-19. Entretanto, a maioria das pesquisas dedicadas ao assunto investigam a usabilidade de ferramentas RV para o ensino-aprendizagem a partir do desenvolvimento de softwares e aplicações, sendo os processos derivados deste uso pouco explorados nas pesquisas, especialmente no campo das ciências humanas, como Artes e Letras. Nessa direção, considera-se que a consequente popularização da RV e demais tecnologias imersivas também traz como problematização o modo como o observador interage e sente os elementos audiovisuais e sua forma de apropriação em processos estético-educacionais. A presente tese tem como objetivo cartografar as experiências estéticas originadas na implementação da tecnologia de RV com alunos em espaços não-formais de aprendizagem, cujos dados cultivados com estudantes buscam responder como as experiências estéticas em RV podem potencializar o aprendizado da arte no espaço não-formal. Para tanto, utilizou-se como metodologia a prática cartográfica de investigação, com o intuito de acompanhar os processos traçados pela pesquisadora e estudantes. Esta tese analisa duas práticas artístico-pedagógicas conduzidas em contextos não-formais de aprendizagem: a primeira, realizada como uma oficina remota sobre a RV, com a participação de sete estudantes com idades entre 8 e 12 anos. A segunda prática foi realizada no NRW-Forum Düsseldorf, durante estadia de pesquisa na Alemanha, com a participação de três estudantes universitárias com idades que variam de 21 a 27 anos. O manejo de análise percorreu três fases principais: (1) Realidade Virtual Cinematográfica: desenvolvendo a educação do olhar, (2) Produção de narrativas: A RV como fomento de experiências artísticas e de design e, (3) Pistas para a pedagogia da percepção e a construção de mundos virtuais por estudantes, nas quais busca-se dialogar com os principais referenciais trazidos na tese, assim como levantar novas problematizações relacionadas às propriedades estéticas e pedagógicas das experiências apresentadas. Assim, os dados cultivados ao longo desta tese mostram, portanto, que as experiências estéticas RV indicam caminhos para a aprendizagem da linguagem da arte em suas múltiplas manifestações audiovisuais, de forma a contribuir para o desenvolvimento da gramática audiovisual inerente à estética RV, bem como ao fortalecer a educação estética de estudantes no âmbito das práticas pedagógicas formais e não-formais.Virtual Reality (VR) has been widely explored in education in Brazil and around the world, and its use has intensified since the Covid-19 pandemic. However, most research devoted to this subject investigates the usability of VR tools for teaching-learning from the development of software and applications, and the processes originated from this use are little explored, especially in the field of humanities, such as Arts and Letters. In this direction, it is considered that the increasing popularization of VR and other immersive technologies also brings the problematization of how the spectator interacts and feels the audiovisual elements and how they are appropriated in the aesthetic-educational processes. This thesis aims to map the aesthetic experiences that arise from the implementation of VR technology with students in non-formal learning environments, whose data cultivated with students seek to answer how aesthetic experiences in VR can enhance art learning in the non-formal setting. For this purpose, the cartographic method was employed, in order to follow the processes outlined by the researcher and students. This thesis analyses two artistic-pedagogical practices conducted in non-formal learning settings: the first one was carried out as a remote workshop on VR, with the participation of seven students aged 8-12 years old. The second practice was conducted at NRW-Forum Düsseldorf, during a research stay in Germany, with the participation of three university students aged 21-27. The handling of analysis went through three main phases: (1) Cinematic Virtual Reality: developing the education of gaze, (2) Production of narratives: VR as fostering artistic and design experiences and, (3) Clues for the pedagogy of perception and the construction of virtual worlds by students, in which it seeks to dialogue with the major references brought in the thesis, as well as to raise new problematizations related to the aesthetic and pedagogical properties of the experiences presented. Thus, the data cultivated throughout this thesis show, therefore, that VR aesthetic experiences can indicate paths for learning the language of art in its multiple audiovisual manifestations, in order to contribute to the development of the audiovisual grammar inherent to VR aesthetics, as well as by strengthening the aesthetic education of students within formal and non-formal pedagogical practices

Molecular phylogeny of horseshoe crab using mitochondrial Cox1 gene as a benchmark sequence

An effort to assess the utility of 650 bp Cytochrome C oxidase subunit I (DNA barcode) gene in delineating the members horseshoe crabs (Family: xiphosura) with closely related sister taxa was made. A total of 33 sequences were extracted from National Center for Biotechnological Information (NCBI) which include horseshoe crabs, beetles, common crabs and scorpion sequences. Constructed phylogram showed beetles are closely related with horseshoe crabs than common crabs. Scorpion spp were distantly related to xiphosurans. Phylogram and observed genetic distance (GD) date were also revealed that Limulus polyphemus was closely related with Tachypleus tridentatus than with T.gigas. Carcinoscorpius rotundicauda was distantly related with L.polyphemus. The observed mean Genetic Distance (GD) value was higher in 3rd codon position in all the selected group of organisms. Among the horseshoe crabs high GC content was observed in L.polyphemus (38.32%) and lowest was observed in T.tridentatus (32.35%). We conclude that COI sequencing (barcoding) could be used in identifying and delineating evolutionary relatedness with closely related specie

Crab and cockle shells as heterogeneous catalysts in the production of biodiesel

In the present study, the waste crab and cockle shells were utilized as source of calcium oxide to transesterify palm olein into methyl esters (biodiesel). Characterization results revealed that the main component of the shells are calcium carbonate which transformed into calcium oxide upon activated above 700 °C for 2 h. Parametric studies have been investigated and optimal conditions were found to be catalyst amount, 5 wt.% and methanol/oil mass ratio, 0.5:1. The waste catalysts perform equally well as laboratory CaO, thus creating another low-cost catalyst source for producing biodiesel. Reusability results confirmed that the prepared catalyst is able to be reemployed up to five times. Statistical analysis has been performed using a Central Composite Design to evaluate the contribution and performance of the parameters on biodiesel purity

Full Proceedings, 2018

Full conference proceedings for the 2018 International Building Physics Association Conference hosted at Syracuse University