|Publication number||US8094150 B2|
|Application number||US 13/093,377|
|Publication date||Jan 10, 2012|
|Priority date||Aug 14, 2001|
|Also published as||US7123263, US7355607, US7952577, US8289317, US8487954, US20030117392, US20060132502, US20080186331, US20110199375, US20120075298, US20130009979, US20130271486|
|Publication number||093377, 13093377, US 8094150 B2, US 8094150B2, US-B2-8094150, US8094150 B2, US8094150B2|
|Original Assignee||Laastra Telecom Gmbh Llc|
|Export Citation||BiBTeX, EndNote, RefMan|
|Patent Citations (22), Non-Patent Citations (18), Referenced by (3), Classifications (9), Legal Events (7)|
|External Links: USPTO, USPTO Assignment, Espacenet|
This application is a continuation of U.S. patent application Ser. No. 12/099,098, filed on Apr. 7, 2008, and entitled “Automatic 3D Modeling,” which in turn claims priority under 35 USC §120 from U.S. Utility patent application Ser. No. 11/354,511, filed on Feb. 14, 2006, and entitled “Automatic 3D Modeling System and Method” which in turn claims priority under 35 USC §120 from U.S. Utility patent application Ser. No. 10/219,041, filed on Aug. 13, 2002, and entitled “Automatic 3D Modeling System and Method” which in turn claims priority under 35 USC 119(e) from U.S. Provisional Patent Application Ser. No. 60/312,384 filed on Aug. 14, 2001 and entitled “Automatic 3D Modeling System And Method,” all of which are incorporated herein by reference in their entirety.
The present invention is related to 3D modeling systems and methods and more particularly, to a system and method that merges automatic image-based model generation techniques with interactive real-time character orientation techniques to provide rapid creation of virtual 3D personalities.
There are many different techniques for generating an animation of a three dimensional object on a computer display. Originally, the animated figures (for example, the faces) looked very much like wooden characters, since the animation was not very good. In particular, the user would typically see an animated face, yet its features and expressions would be static. Perhaps the mouth would open and close, and the eyes might blink, but the facial expressions, and the animation in general, resembled a wood puppet. The problem was that these animations were typically created from scratch as drawings, and were not rendered using an underlying 3D model to capture a more realistic appearance, so that the animation looked unrealistic and not very life-like. More recently, the animations have improved so that a skin may cover the bones of the figure to provide a more realistic animated figure.
While such animations are now rendered over one or more deformation grids to capture a more realistic appearance for the animation, often the animations are still rendered by professional companies and redistributed to users. While this results in high-quality animations, it is limited in that the user does not have the capability to customize a particular animation, for example, of him or herself, for use as a virtual personality. With the advance features of the Internet or the World Wide Web, these virtual personas will extend the capabilities and interaction between users. It would thus be desirable to provide a 3D modeling system and method which enables the typical user to rapidly and easily create a 3D model from an image, such as a photograph, that is useful as a virtual personality.
Typical systems also required that, once a model was created by the skilled animator, the same animator was required to animate the various gestures that you might want to provide for the model. For example, the animator would create the animation of a smile, a hand wave or speaking which would then be incorporated into the model to provide the model with the desired gestures. The process to generate the behavior/gesture data is slow and expensive and requires a skilled animator. It is desirable to provide an automatic mechanism for generating gestures and behaviors for models without the assistance of a skilled animator. It is to these ends that the present invention is directed.
Broadly, the invention utilizes image processing techniques, statistical analysis and 3D geometry deformation to allow photo-realistic 3D models of objects, such as the human face, to be automatically generated from an image (or from multiple images). For example, for the human face, facial proportions and feature details from a photograph (or series of photographs) are identified and used to generate an appropriate 3D model. Image processing and texture mapping techniques also optimize how the photograph(s) is used as detailed, photo-realistic texture for the 3D model.
In accordance with another aspect of the invention, a gesture of the person may be captured and abstracted so that it can be applied to any other model. For example, the animated smile of a particular person may be captured. The smile may then be converted into feature space to provide an abstraction of the gesture. The abstraction of the gesture (e.g., the movements of the different portions of the model) are captured as a gesture. The gesture may then be used for any other model. Thus, in accordance with the invention, the system permits the generation of a gesture model that may be used with other models.
In accordance with the invention, a method for generating a three dimensional model of an object from an image is provided. The method comprises determining the boundary of the object to be modeled and determining the location of one or more landmarks on the object to be modeled. The method further comprises determining the scale and orientation of the object in the image based on the location of the landmarks, aligning the image of the object with the landmarks with a deformation grid, and generating a 3D model of the object based on the mapping of the image of the object to the deformation grid.
In accordance with another aspect of the invention, a computer implemented system for generating a three dimension model of an image is provided. The system comprises a three dimensional model generation module further comprising instructions that receive an image of an object and instructions that automatically generate a three dimensional model of the object. The system further comprises a gesture generation module further comprising instructions for generating a feature space and instructions for generating a gesture object corresponding to a gesture of the object so that the gesture behavior may be applied to another model of an object.
In accordance with yet another aspect of the invention, a method for automatically generating an automatic gesture model is provided. The method comprises receiving an image of an object performing a particular gesture and determining the movements associated with the gesture from the movement of the object to generate a gesture object wherein the gesture object further comprises a coloration change variable storing the change of coloration that occur during the gesture, a two dimensional change variable storing the change of the surface that occur during the gesture and a three dimensional change variable storing the change of the vertices associated with the object during the gesture.
In accordance with yet another aspect of the invention, a gesture object data structure that stores data associated with a gesture for an object is provided. The gesture object comprises a texture change variable storing changes in coloration of a model during a gesture, a texture map change variable storing changes in the surface of the model during the gesture, and a vertices change variable storing changes in the vertices of the model during the gesture wherein the texture change variable, the texture map change variable and the vertices change variable permit the gesture to be applied to another model having a texture and vertices. The gesture object data structure stored its data in a vector space where coloration, surface motion and 3D motion may be used by many individual instances of the model.
While the invention has a greater utility, it will be described in the context of generating a 3D model of the human face and gestures associated with the human fact. Those skilled in the art recognize that any other 3D models and gestures can be generated using the principles and techniques described herein, and that the following is merely exemplary of a particular application of the invention and the invention is not limited to the facial models described herein.
To generate a 3D model of the human face, the invention performs a series of complex image processing techniques to determine a set of landmark points 10 which serve as guides for generating the 3D model.
Since different images may have different orientations, the proper orientation of the image should be determined by locating and grading appropriate landmark points 10. Determining the image orientation allows a more realistic rendering of the image onto the deformation grids. Locating the appropriate landmark points 10 will now be described in detail.
Referring again to
Returning again to
Once the bounds of the head 30 are determined, the location of the eyes 40 can be determined (Step 4). Since the eyes 40 are typically located on the upper half of the head 30, a statistical calculation can be used and the head bounds can be divided into an upper half 42 and a lower half 44 to isolate the eye bound areas 46 a, 46 b. The upper half of the head bounds 42 can be further divided into right and left portions 46 a, 46 b to isolate the left and right eyes 40 a, 40 b, respectively. This is shown in detail in
Referring yet again to
Referring again to
After determining the above information, the approximate landmark points 10 on the head 30 can be properly identified. Preferred landmark points 10 include a) outer head bounds 60 a, 60 b, 60 c; b) inner head bounds 62 a, 62 b, 62 c, 62 d; c) right and left eye bounds 64 a-d, 64 w-z, respectively; d) corners of nose 66 a, 66 b; and e) corners of mouth 68 a, 68 b (mouth line), however, those skilled in the art recognize that other landmark points may be used without departing from the invention.
Having determined the appropriate landmark locations 10 on the head 30, the image can be properly aligned with one or more deformation grids (described below) that define the 3D model 70 of the head (Step 7). The following describes some of the deformation grids that may be used to define the 3D model 70, however, those skilled in the art recognize that these are merely exemplary of certain deformation grids that may be used to define the 3D model and that other deformation grids may be used without departing from the invention.
The grids are aligned in accordance with the landmark locations 10 (shown in
The gesture object also includes a scalar field variable storing the mapping between a feature space of the gesture and a model space of a model to permit transformation of the geometry and motion data. The scalarArray has an entry for each geometry vertex in the Gesture object. Each entry is a 3 dimensional vector that holds the change in scale for that vertex of the Feature level from its undeformed state to the deformed state. The scale is computed by vertex in Feature space by evaluating the scalar change in distance from that vertex to connected vertices. The scalar for a given Gesture vertex is computed by weighted interpolation of that Vertex's position when mapped to UV space of a polygon in the Feature Level. The shape and size of polygons in the feature level are chosen to match areas of similarly scaled movement. This was determined by analyzing visual flow of typical facial gestures. The above method is shown in greater detail in the pseudo-code shown in
The automatically generated model can incorporate built-in behavior animation and interactivity. For example, for the human face, such expressions include gestures, mouth positions for lip syncing (visemes), and head movements. Such behaviors can be integrated with technologies such as automatic lip syncing, text-to-speech, natural language processing, and speech recognition and can trigger or be triggered by user or data driven events. For example, real-time lip syncing of automatically generated models may be associated with audio tracks. In addition, real-time analysis of the audio spoken by an intelligent agent can be provided and synchronized head and facial gestures initiated to provide automatic, lifelike movements to accompany speech delivery.
Thus, virtual personas can be deployed to serve as an intelligent agent that may be used as an interactive, responsive front-end to information contained within knowledge bases, customer resource management systems, and learning management systems, as well as entertainment applications and communications via chat, instant messaging, and e-mail. Now, examples of a gesture being generated from an image of a 3D model and then applied to another model in accordance with the invention will now described.
While the above has been described with reference to a particular method for locating the landmark location points on the image and a particular method for generating gestures, those skilled in the art will recognize that other techniques may be used without departing from the invention as defined by the appended claims. For example, techniques such as pyramid transforms which uses a frequency analysis of the image by down sampling each level and analyzing the frequency differences at each level can be used. Additionally, other techniques such as side sampling and image pyramid techniques can be used to process the image. Furthermore, quadrature (low pass) filtering techniques may be used to increase the signal strength of the facial features, and fuzzy logic techniques may be used to identify the overall location of a face. The location of the landmarks may then be determined by a known corner finding algorithm.
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|Citing Patent||Filing date||Publication date||Applicant||Title|
|US8289317 *||Oct 16, 2012||Laastra Telecom Gmbh Llc||Automatic 3D modeling|
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|International Classification||G06T17/10, G06T15/04, G06T17/00, G06T13/40|
|Cooperative Classification||G06T17/10, G06T13/80, G09G5/02|
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