Mix-and-Match Pipeline to Ease the Creation of New Facial Models for Video Game Applications

Ubisoft has an extensive database of characters heads represented as polygonal meshes. Those come from two primary sources: processed 3D scans and models made by artists. It would be convenient to use this database to mix-and-match parts of characters to create new human-like character heads. Lets say we wish to replace the nose of one character with another nose. We want the junction between the nose and the surrounding areas to be as seamless as possible while accommodating for the new nose, which could have a different size. We will rely on geometric methods such as Laplacian surface editing [Sorkine 2004] to extract vertex positions that fit the new nose in the other facial mesh. The vertex positions will result from an energy minimization to reduce surface curvature discontinuities at the junction while maintaining the surface curvature of both the original face and the new nose. Furthermore, a global optimization will allow the deformation of the new nose so that it fits in the related region of the target head, thus resulting in a realistic head.

Faculty Supervisor:

Eric Paquette

Student:

Donya Ghafourzadeh

Partner:

Ubisoft

Discipline:

Engineering - computer / electrical

Sector:

Information and communications technologies

University:

Program: