Generating Animatable 3D Virtual Humans from Photographs

Abstract

We present an easy, practical and efficient full body cloning methodology. This system utilizes photos taken from the front, side and back of a person in any given imaging environment without requiring a special background or a controlled illuminating condition. A seamless generic body specified in the VRML H-Anim 1.1 format is used to generate an individualized virtual human. The system is composed of two major components: face-cloning and body-cloning. The face-cloning component uses feature points on front and side images and then applies DFFD for shape modification. Next a fully automatic seamless texture mapping is generated for 360? coloring on a 3D polygonal model. The body-cloning component has two steps: (i feature points specification, which enables automatic silhouette detection in an arbitrary background (ii two-stage body modification by using feature points and body silhouette respectively. The final integrated human model has photo-realistic animatable face, hands, feet and body. The result can be visualized in any VRML compliant browser.