[4eyes] Lance Williams on Friday

[Matthew Turk]

I'm trying to set up an opportunity for MAT and Four Eyes Lab students to
meet with Lance Williams (from Nokia Research Center Hollywood) on Friday,
for maybe 30-45 minutes. He's particularly interested in learning about MAT,
but more importantly I just think he'd be interesting to talk with. See his
bio below and the talk announcement below that.

 

Please let me know ASAP if you're interested, and I'll get back to you with
a time if there's sufficient interest. It would probably be just before or
after his 2pm talk.

 

            Matthew

 

 

 

Lance J. Williams is a prominent graphics researcher who made major
contributions to texture map prefiltering, shadow rendering algorithms,
facial animation, and antialiasing techniques. Williams was one of the first
people to recognize the potential of computer graphics to transform film and
video making. 

Williams holds a double major in English and Asian Studies from the
University of Kansas and a doctorate in Computer Science from the University
of Utah. In 1974 he joined the New York Institute of Technology (NYIT).
After NYIT he joined the Advanced Technology Group at Apple in 1987. In
1997, Williams joined Dreamworks SKG. In 2002 he became Chief Scientist at
Walt Disney Feature Animation Studios. In 2006, Williams joined Google and
worked with the Google Earth team. He is currently a Principal Member of
Research Staff at Nokia. Williams has won the ACM SIGGRAPH Coons Award for
Outstanding Creative Contributions to computer graphics. In 2002, he was
awarded a 2001 Technical Achievement Award by the Academy of Motion Picture
Arts and Sciences for "his pioneering influence in the field of
computer-generated animation and effects for motion pictures."

 

 

Friday October 9, 2009

2:00-3:00pm

Computer Science Conference Room, Harold Frank Hall Rm. 1132

 

HOST: Matthew Turk

 

SPEAKER: LANCE WILLIAMS

Nokia Research Center Hollywood

 

Title: Disney Human Face Project - capture and transfer of facial dynamics

 

Abstract:

 

The Human Face Project" is a short film documenting an effort at Walt 

Disney Feature Animation to track and animate human facial performance, 

which was shown in the SIGGRAPH 2002 Electronic Theater. This 

presentation will outline the techniques developed in this project, and 

demonstrated in that film. The face tracking system we developed is an 

example of model-based computer vision, and exploits the detailed 

degrees of freedom of a geometric face model to confine the space of 

solutions. Optical flow and/or successive rerendering of the model are 

employed in an optimization loop to converge on model parameter 

estimates. The structure of the model permits very principled mapping of 

estimated expressions to different targets. Of critical importance for 

media applications is the handling of details beyond the resolution or 

degrees of freedom of the tracking model. We describe behavioral 

modeling expedients for realizing these details in a plausible way.

 

Bio:

 

Lance J. Williams is an Academy Award and Steven A. Coons Award winning 

graphics researcher who made major contributions to texture map 

prefiltering, shadowing algorithms, facial animation, and image-based 

rendering. Prior to Nokia, Lance was a software engineer for Google 

Earth, senior scientist at Applied Minds, Chief Scientist at Walt Disney 

Feature Animation, senior software engineer at dreamWorks SKG, and 

member of technical staff in Apple's Advanced Technology Group, where he 

contributed to QuickTime VR. He graduated from the University of Kansas 

in 1972, and attended graduate school at the University of Utah. He was 

awarded a Ph.D. in computer science from the University of Utah in 2000.

 

 

 

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