Daniel Bardsley

One of my colleagues (Leif Oppermann) recently visited the 2007 game developers conference and told me about some quite amazing work by Silicon Studio. Their Motion Portrait software uses model based reconstruction to create a 3D head model from a single frontal image of a subject. The model is then fully animated and capable of a wide range of human expression.

This is exactly what I’m trying to achieve at this stage of my research. Shame this blows anything I’m likely to be able to construct out of the water!

Check out the video below for a demonstration from the show.
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The new scientist is running an article on full body capture techniques. From the article: A 3D animation technique that could take the hard work out of acting has been developed by German researchers. It allows a high-resolution 3D scan of one person to be pasted on to another person’s movements.

Team members from the Max Planck Institute for Computer Science in Saarbrücken, Germany, say their technique is faster than traditional animation methods. Usually animators must design a skeleton to go inside a character and ensure its movements translate into realistic deformations of the outer surface.
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