github.io/Towards-Realistic-Generative-3D-Face-Models Figure 1: 3D generative face model. a) High... more github.io/Towards-Realistic-Generative-3D-Face-Models Figure 1: 3D generative face model. a) High-resolution 3D shape and albedo recovered from a StyleGAN2 generated image. Novel views can be rendered using the estimated face model. b) Editing of 3D faces with text. This method allows for 3D expression manipulation through guidance with the CLIP model.
The environments of How To Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World are immersed in waterfalls, from l... more The environments of How To Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World are immersed in waterfalls, from lush Nordic islands to mysterious, submerged kingdoms of lakes and crystals. Because of the variety and complexity of these sets (about 4000 waterfalls had to be created), a traditional approach would have consumed too many artistic and rendering resources. We decided to develop a collection of tools named InstaFalls with a few goals in mind: streamlining the creative process by minimizing the time spent on simulations, iterating faster thanks to real-time feedback, and managing the large quantity of generated data. Using this system, artists were able to create all the water elements of an environment set, from misty calderas to foamy, aerated ponds.
Hair plays a feature role in the film Trolls. It is a crucial part of the overall character desig... more Hair plays a feature role in the film Trolls. It is a crucial part of the overall character design of the Trolls themselves, typically composing over half the silhouette of the character. However, the use of hair on the show went well beyond the standard coif and bled into acting beats, traditional effects, environments, and set pieces. This talk presents the wide variety of unique and challenging hair effects in the film and the techniques used to create them.
This deliverable describes a method for the problems addressed include representation of differen... more This deliverable describes a method for the problems addressed include representation of different human participants at appropriate levels of detail; supporting the representation and behaviour of different kinds of virtual actors or virtual audience members and supporting the representation, behaviour and management of collectives of humans and virtual actors (e.g. developing aggregation techniques for representing crowds).The propose of this task is the integration of the motion control of crowds defined in task 5.3 with the representation of the population created in task 5.2. In particular, we have made a management of the levels of details for representation and animation. For example, particular integration and evaluation was needed to simulate populations of walking people seen from away. The walking method is adapted to different people sizes automatically generated in Task 5.2. populations of participants and autonomous virtual humans will be integrated. Testing is done to...
The animated movie How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World introduces a new species of dragon ... more The animated movie How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World introduces a new species of dragon in the franchise: the Deathgripper. This dragon possesses the ability to spit green acid that both dissolves and sets ablaze objects that it touches. In this talk we present the various challenges posed by this somewhat unique effect from the visual development phase to production shots.
This deliverable describes a method for the problems addressed include representation of differen... more This deliverable describes a method for the problems addressed include representation of different human participants at appropriate levels of detail; supporting the representation and behaviour of different kinds of virtual actors or virtual audience members and supporting the representation, behaviour and management of collectives of humans and virtual actors (e.g. developing aggregation techniques for representing crowds).The propose of this task is the integration of the motion control of crowds defined in task 5.3 with the representation of the population created in task 5.2. In particular, we have made a management of the levels of details for representation and animation. For example, particular integration and evaluation was needed to simulate populations of walking people seen from away. The walking method is adapted to different people sizes automatically generated in Task 5.2. populations of participants and autonomous virtual humans will be integrated. Testing is done to...
ecent innovations in interactive digital television 1 and multimedia products have enhanced viewe... more ecent innovations in interactive digital television 1 and multimedia products have enhanced viewers' ability to interact with programs and therefore to individualize their viewing experience. Designers for such applications need systems that provide the capability of immersing real-time simulated humans in games, multimedia titles, and film anima-tions. The ability to place the viewer in a dramatic situation created by the behavior of other, simulated digital actors will add a new dimension to existing simulation-based products for education and entertainment on interactive TV. In the games market, convincing simulated humans rejuvenate existing games and enable the production of new kinds of games. Finally, in virtual reality (VR), representing participants by a virtual actor—self-representation in the virtual world—is an important factor for a sense of presence. This becomes even more important in multiuser environments, where effective interaction among participants contribut...
In this paper we present a virtual tennis game. We describe the creation and modeling of the virt... more In this paper we present a virtual tennis game. We describe the creation and modeling of the virtual humans and body deformations, also showing the real-time animation and rendering aspects of the avatars. We focus on the animation of the virtual tennis ball and the behavior of a synthetic, autonomous referee who judges the tennis games. The networked, collaborative, virtual environment system is described with special reference to its interfaces to driver programs. We also mention the virtual reality (VR) devices that are used to merge the interactive players into the virtual tennis environment, together with the equipment and technologies employed for this exciting experience. We conclude with remarks on personal experiences during the game and on future research topics to improve parts of the presented system.
Human body modeling and deformation is customarily split into three separate problems: face, body... more Human body modeling and deformation is customarily split into three separate problems: face, body and hands. The human face is distinguishable in that it conveys emotions through expression wrinkles, which are not found in any other body part. This is why facial animation is generally taken care of by a specific deformation system. Analogously, hands animation is usually handled by another specific deformation module because of their extraordinary mobility by comparison with other body parts. In this work, we have focused on the body excluding
ACM SIGGRAPH 2007 sketches on - SIGGRAPH '07, 2007
ABSTRACT Visual representations of traffic flow and density in 3D city models provide substantial... more ABSTRACT Visual representations of traffic flow and density in 3D city models provide substantial decision support in urban planning. While a large repertoire of efficient techniques exists for visualizing the static components of such environments (e.g., digital ...
In this paper we present a Virtual Tennis Game. We describe the creation and modeling of the virt... more In this paper we present a Virtual Tennis Game. We describe the creation and modeling of the virtual humans and body deformations, also showing the real time animation and rendering aspects of the avatars. We focus on the virtual tennis ball animation and the behavior of the Synthetic Autonomous Referee, who judges the tennis games. The networked collaborative virtual environment system is described with special reference to its interfaces to driver programs. We also mention the VR devices used to merge the interactive players into the virtual tennis environment, together with the equipment and technologies employed for this exciting experience. We conclude with remarks on personal experiences during the game and future research topics to improve parts of the presented system.
In the animated movie HOME, the Boov, an alien species, have a unique way of displaying their emo... more In the animated movie HOME, the Boov, an alien species, have a unique way of displaying their emotions. They transition to a specific color depending on their mood: red when angry, yellow when scared, blue when sad, etc. This talk focuses on the visual development of this "emoting effect" as well as how we produced close to 400 shots.
In this paper we extend previous work [1] and propose a muscle model suitable for computer graphi... more In this paper we extend previous work [1] and propose a muscle model suitable for computer graphics based on physiological and anatomical considerations. Muscle motion and deformation is automatically derived from one or several action lines, each action line being deformed by a 1D mass-spring system. The resulting model is fast, can accommodate most superficial human muscles, and could easily be integrated into current modeling packages.
Rendering and animating in real-time a multitude of articulated characters presents a real challe... more Rendering and animating in real-time a multitude of articulated characters presents a real challenge and few hardware systems are up to the task. Up to now little research has been conducted to tackle the issue of real-time rendering of numerous virtual humans. However, due to the growing interest in collaborative virtual environments the demand for numerous realistic avatars is becoming stronger. This paper presents a hardware-independent technique that improves the display rate of animated characters by acting on the sole geometric and rendering information. We first review the acceleration techniques traditionally in use in computer graphics and highlight their suitability to articulated characters. Then we show how impostors can be used to render virtual humans. Finally we introduce concrete case studies that demonstrate the effectiveness of our approach.
The continuously increasing complexity of computer animations makes it necessary to rely on the k... more The continuously increasing complexity of computer animations makes it necessary to rely on the knowledge of various experts to cover the different areas of computer graphics and animation. This fact, which can be noted in many areas of scientific working, leads to increasing effort being put into research concerning cooperative working over the internet. However, it still requires substantial effort and time to combine different animation techniques in a common virtual environment. When trying to perform collaborative animation over a network, we often face the problem of having to combine animation systems and applications based on different software and hardware and using incompatible data structures. We present an approach, based on a client-server architecture and employing a VRML-based language as common interchange format, that allows inhomogeneous systems to be easily incorporated into a collaborative animation. The applications can be freed from employing plug-ins or libraries to link into a common animation platform; they keep a local copy of the global scene and only need the ability to export the internal data representation into the so called "PaVRML" language, the language we use use to exchange data and synchronize the clients. This approach does not only allow a number of practitioners to share their know-how within a common animation without requiring the huge amount of work necessary to port their application to a common platform. It also makes it often possible in the first place to combine the capabilities of different animation systems into a single complex animation. Additionally, we investigate solutions to optimize the network load for real-time applications. In this paper we present preliminary results and discuss the future developments of this ongoing work.
Integrating virtual human's animation in networked virtual environments (NVEs) has the potential ... more Integrating virtual human's animation in networked virtual environments (NVEs) has the potential to create severe network load issues. In NVEs, users are represented by their virtual embodiments. The articulated structure of these embodiments introduces a new complexity in the communication, representation, and streaming of animations. This might create a significant overhead, especially as the number of participants in the simulation increases. In this paper we present problems and solutions to efficiently transmit virtual human data over the network.
In this paper we propose a new, generic, multi-layered model for automating the deformations of t... more In this paper we propose a new, generic, multi-layered model for automating the deformations of the skin of human characters based on physiological and anatomical considerations. Muscle motion and deformation is automatically derived from an action line that is deformed using a 1D mass-spring system. We cover the muscle layer with a viscoelastic fat layer that concentrates the crucial dynamics effects of the animation. We present results on a female upper torso.
In this paper we extend previous work [Aubel00] and propose a muscle model suitable for computer ... more In this paper we extend previous work [Aubel00] and propose a muscle model suitable for computer graphics based on physiological and anatomical considerations. Muscle motion and deformation is automatically derived from an action line that is deformed using a 1D mass-spring system. The resulting model is fast and can accommodate most superficial human muscles.
... Keywords human modeling, anatomically-based modeling 1 Introduction ... 4 Joint Models 3Human... more ... Keywords human modeling, anatomically-based modeling 1 Introduction ... 4 Joint Models 3Human Anatomy The skeleton determines the general shape of :he body. ... Yet, the elongations of the segments be-tween nodes do not have any physical meaning. ...
github.io/Towards-Realistic-Generative-3D-Face-Models Figure 1: 3D generative face model. a) High... more github.io/Towards-Realistic-Generative-3D-Face-Models Figure 1: 3D generative face model. a) High-resolution 3D shape and albedo recovered from a StyleGAN2 generated image. Novel views can be rendered using the estimated face model. b) Editing of 3D faces with text. This method allows for 3D expression manipulation through guidance with the CLIP model.
The environments of How To Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World are immersed in waterfalls, from l... more The environments of How To Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World are immersed in waterfalls, from lush Nordic islands to mysterious, submerged kingdoms of lakes and crystals. Because of the variety and complexity of these sets (about 4000 waterfalls had to be created), a traditional approach would have consumed too many artistic and rendering resources. We decided to develop a collection of tools named InstaFalls with a few goals in mind: streamlining the creative process by minimizing the time spent on simulations, iterating faster thanks to real-time feedback, and managing the large quantity of generated data. Using this system, artists were able to create all the water elements of an environment set, from misty calderas to foamy, aerated ponds.
Hair plays a feature role in the film Trolls. It is a crucial part of the overall character desig... more Hair plays a feature role in the film Trolls. It is a crucial part of the overall character design of the Trolls themselves, typically composing over half the silhouette of the character. However, the use of hair on the show went well beyond the standard coif and bled into acting beats, traditional effects, environments, and set pieces. This talk presents the wide variety of unique and challenging hair effects in the film and the techniques used to create them.
This deliverable describes a method for the problems addressed include representation of differen... more This deliverable describes a method for the problems addressed include representation of different human participants at appropriate levels of detail; supporting the representation and behaviour of different kinds of virtual actors or virtual audience members and supporting the representation, behaviour and management of collectives of humans and virtual actors (e.g. developing aggregation techniques for representing crowds).The propose of this task is the integration of the motion control of crowds defined in task 5.3 with the representation of the population created in task 5.2. In particular, we have made a management of the levels of details for representation and animation. For example, particular integration and evaluation was needed to simulate populations of walking people seen from away. The walking method is adapted to different people sizes automatically generated in Task 5.2. populations of participants and autonomous virtual humans will be integrated. Testing is done to...
The animated movie How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World introduces a new species of dragon ... more The animated movie How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World introduces a new species of dragon in the franchise: the Deathgripper. This dragon possesses the ability to spit green acid that both dissolves and sets ablaze objects that it touches. In this talk we present the various challenges posed by this somewhat unique effect from the visual development phase to production shots.
This deliverable describes a method for the problems addressed include representation of differen... more This deliverable describes a method for the problems addressed include representation of different human participants at appropriate levels of detail; supporting the representation and behaviour of different kinds of virtual actors or virtual audience members and supporting the representation, behaviour and management of collectives of humans and virtual actors (e.g. developing aggregation techniques for representing crowds).The propose of this task is the integration of the motion control of crowds defined in task 5.3 with the representation of the population created in task 5.2. In particular, we have made a management of the levels of details for representation and animation. For example, particular integration and evaluation was needed to simulate populations of walking people seen from away. The walking method is adapted to different people sizes automatically generated in Task 5.2. populations of participants and autonomous virtual humans will be integrated. Testing is done to...
ecent innovations in interactive digital television 1 and multimedia products have enhanced viewe... more ecent innovations in interactive digital television 1 and multimedia products have enhanced viewers' ability to interact with programs and therefore to individualize their viewing experience. Designers for such applications need systems that provide the capability of immersing real-time simulated humans in games, multimedia titles, and film anima-tions. The ability to place the viewer in a dramatic situation created by the behavior of other, simulated digital actors will add a new dimension to existing simulation-based products for education and entertainment on interactive TV. In the games market, convincing simulated humans rejuvenate existing games and enable the production of new kinds of games. Finally, in virtual reality (VR), representing participants by a virtual actor—self-representation in the virtual world—is an important factor for a sense of presence. This becomes even more important in multiuser environments, where effective interaction among participants contribut...
In this paper we present a virtual tennis game. We describe the creation and modeling of the virt... more In this paper we present a virtual tennis game. We describe the creation and modeling of the virtual humans and body deformations, also showing the real-time animation and rendering aspects of the avatars. We focus on the animation of the virtual tennis ball and the behavior of a synthetic, autonomous referee who judges the tennis games. The networked, collaborative, virtual environment system is described with special reference to its interfaces to driver programs. We also mention the virtual reality (VR) devices that are used to merge the interactive players into the virtual tennis environment, together with the equipment and technologies employed for this exciting experience. We conclude with remarks on personal experiences during the game and on future research topics to improve parts of the presented system.
Human body modeling and deformation is customarily split into three separate problems: face, body... more Human body modeling and deformation is customarily split into three separate problems: face, body and hands. The human face is distinguishable in that it conveys emotions through expression wrinkles, which are not found in any other body part. This is why facial animation is generally taken care of by a specific deformation system. Analogously, hands animation is usually handled by another specific deformation module because of their extraordinary mobility by comparison with other body parts. In this work, we have focused on the body excluding
ACM SIGGRAPH 2007 sketches on - SIGGRAPH '07, 2007
ABSTRACT Visual representations of traffic flow and density in 3D city models provide substantial... more ABSTRACT Visual representations of traffic flow and density in 3D city models provide substantial decision support in urban planning. While a large repertoire of efficient techniques exists for visualizing the static components of such environments (e.g., digital ...
In this paper we present a Virtual Tennis Game. We describe the creation and modeling of the virt... more In this paper we present a Virtual Tennis Game. We describe the creation and modeling of the virtual humans and body deformations, also showing the real time animation and rendering aspects of the avatars. We focus on the virtual tennis ball animation and the behavior of the Synthetic Autonomous Referee, who judges the tennis games. The networked collaborative virtual environment system is described with special reference to its interfaces to driver programs. We also mention the VR devices used to merge the interactive players into the virtual tennis environment, together with the equipment and technologies employed for this exciting experience. We conclude with remarks on personal experiences during the game and future research topics to improve parts of the presented system.
In the animated movie HOME, the Boov, an alien species, have a unique way of displaying their emo... more In the animated movie HOME, the Boov, an alien species, have a unique way of displaying their emotions. They transition to a specific color depending on their mood: red when angry, yellow when scared, blue when sad, etc. This talk focuses on the visual development of this "emoting effect" as well as how we produced close to 400 shots.
In this paper we extend previous work [1] and propose a muscle model suitable for computer graphi... more In this paper we extend previous work [1] and propose a muscle model suitable for computer graphics based on physiological and anatomical considerations. Muscle motion and deformation is automatically derived from one or several action lines, each action line being deformed by a 1D mass-spring system. The resulting model is fast, can accommodate most superficial human muscles, and could easily be integrated into current modeling packages.
Rendering and animating in real-time a multitude of articulated characters presents a real challe... more Rendering and animating in real-time a multitude of articulated characters presents a real challenge and few hardware systems are up to the task. Up to now little research has been conducted to tackle the issue of real-time rendering of numerous virtual humans. However, due to the growing interest in collaborative virtual environments the demand for numerous realistic avatars is becoming stronger. This paper presents a hardware-independent technique that improves the display rate of animated characters by acting on the sole geometric and rendering information. We first review the acceleration techniques traditionally in use in computer graphics and highlight their suitability to articulated characters. Then we show how impostors can be used to render virtual humans. Finally we introduce concrete case studies that demonstrate the effectiveness of our approach.
The continuously increasing complexity of computer animations makes it necessary to rely on the k... more The continuously increasing complexity of computer animations makes it necessary to rely on the knowledge of various experts to cover the different areas of computer graphics and animation. This fact, which can be noted in many areas of scientific working, leads to increasing effort being put into research concerning cooperative working over the internet. However, it still requires substantial effort and time to combine different animation techniques in a common virtual environment. When trying to perform collaborative animation over a network, we often face the problem of having to combine animation systems and applications based on different software and hardware and using incompatible data structures. We present an approach, based on a client-server architecture and employing a VRML-based language as common interchange format, that allows inhomogeneous systems to be easily incorporated into a collaborative animation. The applications can be freed from employing plug-ins or libraries to link into a common animation platform; they keep a local copy of the global scene and only need the ability to export the internal data representation into the so called "PaVRML" language, the language we use use to exchange data and synchronize the clients. This approach does not only allow a number of practitioners to share their know-how within a common animation without requiring the huge amount of work necessary to port their application to a common platform. It also makes it often possible in the first place to combine the capabilities of different animation systems into a single complex animation. Additionally, we investigate solutions to optimize the network load for real-time applications. In this paper we present preliminary results and discuss the future developments of this ongoing work.
Integrating virtual human's animation in networked virtual environments (NVEs) has the potential ... more Integrating virtual human's animation in networked virtual environments (NVEs) has the potential to create severe network load issues. In NVEs, users are represented by their virtual embodiments. The articulated structure of these embodiments introduces a new complexity in the communication, representation, and streaming of animations. This might create a significant overhead, especially as the number of participants in the simulation increases. In this paper we present problems and solutions to efficiently transmit virtual human data over the network.
In this paper we propose a new, generic, multi-layered model for automating the deformations of t... more In this paper we propose a new, generic, multi-layered model for automating the deformations of the skin of human characters based on physiological and anatomical considerations. Muscle motion and deformation is automatically derived from an action line that is deformed using a 1D mass-spring system. We cover the muscle layer with a viscoelastic fat layer that concentrates the crucial dynamics effects of the animation. We present results on a female upper torso.
In this paper we extend previous work [Aubel00] and propose a muscle model suitable for computer ... more In this paper we extend previous work [Aubel00] and propose a muscle model suitable for computer graphics based on physiological and anatomical considerations. Muscle motion and deformation is automatically derived from an action line that is deformed using a 1D mass-spring system. The resulting model is fast and can accommodate most superficial human muscles.
... Keywords human modeling, anatomically-based modeling 1 Introduction ... 4 Joint Models 3Human... more ... Keywords human modeling, anatomically-based modeling 1 Introduction ... 4 Joint Models 3Human Anatomy The skeleton determines the general shape of :he body. ... Yet, the elongations of the segments be-tween nodes do not have any physical meaning. ...
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Papers by Amaury Aubel