Achieving Photoreal Digital Actors in Film and in Real-Time

INESC-ID Distinguished Talk

Instituto Superior Técnico TAGUSPark (Sala 1.38)

Speaker: Dr. Paul Debevec

Associate Director, Graphics Research, USC Institute for Creative Technologies

http://ict.usc.edu/~debevec

October 21st 2013, 14h30

IST TagusPark

Av. Prof. Doutor Aníbal Cavaco Silva — 2744-016 Porto Salvo

All are welcome to attend. The talk is open to the public

Abstract:

Somewhere between "Final Fantasy" and "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button", digital actors crossed the "Uncanny Valley" from looking strangely synthetic to believably real. This talk describes how the Light Stage scanning systems and HDRI lighting techniques developed at the USC Institute for Creative Technologies have helped create digital actors in a range of recent movies and research projects. In particular, the talk describes how high-resolution face scanning, advanced character rigging, and performance-driven facial animation were combined to create 2008’s "Digital Emily", a collaboration with Image Metrics (now Faceware) yielding one of the first photoreal digital actors, and 2013's "Digital Ira", a collaboration with Activision Inc., yielding the most realistic real-time digital actor to date. The talk includes recent developments in HDRI lighting, polarization difference imaging, and reflectance measurement, and 3D object scanning, and concludes with advances in autostereoscopic 3D displays to enable 3D teleconferencing and holographic characters.

Bio:

Paul Debevec is a Research Professor at the University of Southern California and the Associate Director of Graphics Research at USC's Institute for Creative Technologies. From his 1996 P.hD. at UC Berkeley, Debevec’s publications and animations have focused on techniques for photogrammetry, image-based rendering, high dynamic range imaging, image-based lighting, appearance measurement, facial animation, and 3D displays. Debevec serves as the Vice President of ACM SIGGRAPH and received a Scientific and Engineering Academy Award® in 2010 for his work on the Light Stage facial capture systems, used in movies including Spider-Man 2, Superman Returns, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, Avatar, Tron: Legacy, The Avengers, and Oblivion. http://www.pauldebevec.com/