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.