Near-instant capture of high-resolution facial geometry and reflectance

ABSTRACT

Modeling realistic human characters is frequently done using 3D recordings of the shape and appearance of real people, often across a set of different facial expressions to build blendshape facial models. Believable characters that cross the "Uncanny Valley" require high-quality geometry, texture maps, reflectance properties, and surface detail at the level of skin pores and fine wrinkles. Unfortunately, there has not yet been a technique for recording such datasets that is near-instantaneous and low-cost. While some facial capture techniques are instantaneous and inexpensive [Beeler et al. 2010], these do not generally provide lighting-independent texture maps, specular reflectance information, or high-resolution surface normal detail for relighting. In contrast, techniques which use multiple photographs from spherical lighting setups [Ghosh et al. 2011] do capture such reflectance properties, at the expense of longer capture times and complicated custom equipment.

References

1. Beeler, T., Bickel, B., Beardsley, P., Sumner, B., and Gross, M. 2010. High-quality single-shot capture of facial geometry. ACM Trans. Graph. 29 (July), 40:1--40:9.
2. Ghosh, A., Fyffe, G., Tunwattanapong, B., Busch, J., Yu, X., and Debevec, P. 2011. Multiview face capture using polarized spherical gradient illumination. ACM Trans. Graphics (Proc. SIGGRAPH Asia) 30, 6.

Index Terms

• Computing methodologies

  • Computer graphics

    • Shape modeling

• Theory of computation

  • Randomness, geometry and discrete structures

    • Computational geometry