Method of modeling objects to synthesize three-dimensional, photo-realistic animations
First Claim
1. A method of creating a three-dimensional model of a three-dimensional object for generating photo-realistic animation, the method comprising the steps of:
- a) defining a set of three-dimensional planes approximating an overall shape of the three-dimensional object and its surrounding area;
b) recording a set of images of said three-dimensional object as it undergoes both rigid movement, defined as changes in pose, and plastic deformation, defined as changes in appearances;
c) creating a bitmap for each recorded image;
d) storing the created bitmaps in a database, the database used to create the three-dimensional model of said three-dimensional object;
e) preparing an empty frame to receive a synthesized view of said three-dimensional object;
f) choosing an arbitrary pose for the synthesis of said three-dimensional object and a desired appearance;
g) selecting, for a three-dimensional plane from the set of three-dimensional planes, a bitmap with the desired appearance, chosen in step f), from those stored in the database and determining the pose of said three-dimensional object as it appears on that bitmap;
h) re-projecting the three-dimensional plane of said three-dimensional object from its pose on the recorded bitmap onto its new pose on the empty frame created in step e); and
i) repeating steps g) and h) for each three-dimensional plane in the set of three-dimensional planes.
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Abstract
A method for modeling three-dimensional objects to create photo-realistic animations using a data-driven approach. The three-dimensional object is defined by a set of separate three-dimensional planes, each plane enclosing an area of the object that undergoes visual changes during animation. Recorded video is used to create bitmap data to populate a database for each three-dimensional plane. The video is analyzed in terms of both rigid movements (changes in pose) and plastic deformation (changes in expression) to create the bitmaps. The modeling is particularly well-suited for animations of a human face, where an audio track generated by a text-to-speech synthesizer can be added to the animation to create a photo-realistic “talking head”.
187 Citations
10 Claims
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1. A method of creating a three-dimensional model of a three-dimensional object for generating photo-realistic animation, the method comprising the steps of:
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a) defining a set of three-dimensional planes approximating an overall shape of the three-dimensional object and its surrounding area;
b) recording a set of images of said three-dimensional object as it undergoes both rigid movement, defined as changes in pose, and plastic deformation, defined as changes in appearances;
c) creating a bitmap for each recorded image;
d) storing the created bitmaps in a database, the database used to create the three-dimensional model of said three-dimensional object;
e) preparing an empty frame to receive a synthesized view of said three-dimensional object;
f) choosing an arbitrary pose for the synthesis of said three-dimensional object and a desired appearance;
g) selecting, for a three-dimensional plane from the set of three-dimensional planes, a bitmap with the desired appearance, chosen in step f), from those stored in the database and determining the pose of said three-dimensional object as it appears on that bitmap;
h) re-projecting the three-dimensional plane of said three-dimensional object from its pose on the recorded bitmap onto its new pose on the empty frame created in step e); and
i) repeating steps g) and h) for each three-dimensional plane in the set of three-dimensional planes. - View Dependent Claims (2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10)
j) repeating steps e) through i) for each frame of an animation.
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3. The method as defined in claim 1, wherein in performing step h), the following steps are performed:
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1) obtaining, for a selected plane from the set of three-dimensional planes, a first quadrilateral boundary marking the plane'"'"'s perspective projection on the recorded image, using the pose of the object on said image;
2) obtaining, for the selected plane, a second quadrilateral boundary on the synthesized frame, marking the plane'"'"'s perspective projection using the new chosen pose of the object; and
3) warping the pixels of the image that are bound by the first quadrilateral into the pixels of the synthesized frame bound by the second quadrilateral.
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4. The method as defined in claim 3 wherein in performing step h3), bilinear interpolation is used in the warping process.
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5. The method as defined in claim 3 wherein in performing step h3), pixel warping includes the method of alpha-blending using a transparency mask.
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6. The method as defined by claim 1 wherein in performing step g), a feature vector is used for selecting the bitmap.
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7. The method as defined in claim 6 wherein the feature vector contains one or more of the following features:
- the pose of the object;
measurements of recognizable parts of the object obtained by computer vision algorithms from the image;
statistics calculated directly from the pixels of the image;
normalized bitmaps from which pixels are obtained by warping the pixels of an area of the image corresponding to the perspective projection of a plane of the object'"'"'s model using the pose of the object;
measurements of recognizable parts on a normalized bitmap; and
statistics calculated directly from the pixels of a normalized bitmap.
- the pose of the object;
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8. The method as defined in claim 7 wherein the feature vectors are pre-computed from the recorded bitmaps of step b) and stored in the database, before executing step g).
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9. The method as defined in claim 1 wherein the object is a human face and in performing step a), the set of three-dimensional planes approximating the overall shape of the face comprises:
- forehead, eyes, cheeks, mouth, chin, jaw and the entire head.
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10. The method as defined in claim 9 wherein in performing step f), the pose is computed from the positions of a set of facial parts, namely:
- the four eye corners and the pair of nostrils.
Specification