[4eyes] Visual Computing Cafe Seminar Friday Feb. 14, 2014

[Pradeep Sen]

UCSB Visual Computing Café Seminar Friday February 14, 2014
12:30pm - 1:30pm, Phelps 3526
            ** Note change of venue! **


TITLE:
3D Human Capture: From VFX to the Mainstream
by Hao Li, University of Southern California


ABSTRACT:

With the emergence of real-time 3D depth sensing,
performance capture technologies in visual effects
are undergoing a radical shift from traditional marker
and vision-based imaging to a geometry processing pipeline,
allowing more faithful measurement of people without the
requirement of wearing motion capture suits. The next
generation imaging systems will recover large amounts of
dynamic 3D data and the big challenge will be in their
efficient treatment and analysis.

I will present an overview of state-of-the-art 3D capture
techniques and introduce a fundamental technique to allow
computers to automatically understand captured data from
a geometric perspective. I will show how these techniques
can help modeling digital humans in the context of
entertainment and how they also impact other sciences,
such as in evolutionary biology, cardiology, and cancer
treatment. With the democratization of 3D depth sensors such
as Microsoft's Kinect, these systems are no longer prototype
technologies from research labs or visual effects studios,
but are available to everyone. They will play a key role
for future consumer level products innovating human-computer
interfaces and 3D communication.

I will also show a live demonstration of a cutting-edge
real-time facial animation system that I developed at Industrial
Light & Magic which is based on a low cost level depth sensor.
The system learns personalized facial expressions on-the-fly
without the need of a tedious training process. While primarily
developed to innovate real-time virtual production in the film
and gaming industry, the tracking technology has the potential
to impact the fidelity of emotions analysis, improve surveillance
and monitoring systems, and be used for massive data collection
for behavioral analytics.

Finally, I will discuss several important challenges that are
ahead of us in the context of real-time 3D digitization of humans,
and motivate the potential for upcoming personalized applications
ranging from interactive gaming to 3D printing.


BIO:

Hao Li recently joined USC as an assistant professor of Computer
Science, after working for a year at the R&D group at Industrial
Light & Magic/Lucasfilm as a research lead, developing next
generation real-time performance capture technologies for the
upcoming Star Wars episodes. Prior to his time in the visual effects
industry, He spent a year as a postdoctoral research at Columbia
and Princeton Universities, right after obtaining his Ph. D. from
ETH Zurich in 2010.

His research lies in geometry processing, 3D reconstruction, and
real-time performance capture. While primarily developed for Computer
Graphics and Vision applications, his work on geometry-driven
performance capture has also impacted the field of human shape analysis
and biomedicine. His algorithms are widely deployed in the industry
ranging from leading visual effects studios to manufacturers of 
state-of-
the-art radiation therapy systems. Since 2009, eight of his papers
have been published at Siggraph and Siggraph Asia. he has been named
top 35 innovator under 35 by MIT Technology Review in 2013 and this
year’s NextGen 10: Innovators under 40 by CSQ magazine. He was also
awarded the Swiss National Science Foundation fellowship for
prospective researchers in 2011, and obtained the best paper award
at the Symposium of Computer Animation in 2009.


URL:
http://hao.li/


-- 
Pradeep Sen
Associate Professor
UCSB MIRAGE Lab
Dept. of Electrical & Computer Engineering
University of California, Santa Barbara
Santa Barbara, CA 93106-9560