Oleg Alexander

University of Southern California | USC · Institute for Creative Technologies

Creating and animating realistic 3D human faces is an important element of virtual reality, video games, and other areas that involve interactive 3D graphics. In this paper, we propose a system to generate photorealistic 3D blendshape-based face models automatically using only a single consumer RGB-D sensor. The capture and processing requires no a...

We describe a digital system that allows people to have an interactive conversation with a human storyteller (a Holocaust survivor) who has recorded a number of dialogue contributions, including many compelling narratives of his experiences and thoughts. The goal is to preserve as much as possible of the experience of face-to-face interaction. The...

Creating and animating a realistic 3D human face is an important task in computer graphics. The capability of capturing the 3D face of a human subject and reanimate it quickly will find many applications in games, training simulations, and interactive 3D graphics. We demonstrate a system to capture photorealistic 3D faces and generate the blendshap...

Automultiscopic 3D displays allow a large number of viewers to experience 3D content simultaneously without the hassle of special glasses or head gear. Our display uses a dense array of video projectors to generate many images with high-angular density over a wide-field of view. As each user moves around the display, their eyes smoothly transition...

We present a technique for synthesizing the effects of skin microstructure deformation by anisotropically convolving a high-resolution displacement map to match normal distribution changes in measured skin samples. We use a 10-micron resolution scanning technique to measure several in vivo skin samples as they are stretched and compressed in differ...

Creating and animating a realistic 3D human face has been an important task in computer graphics. The capability of capturing the 3D face of a human subject and reanimate it quickly will find many applications in games, training simulations, and interactive 3D graphics. In this paper, we propose a system to capture photorealistic 3D faces and gener...

We present a process for rendering a realistic facial performance with control of viewpoint and illumination. The performance is based on one or more high-quality geometry and reflectance scans of an actor in static poses, driven by one or more video streams of a performance. We compute optical flow correspondences between neighboring video frames,...

We endeavor to model dynamic microfacet distributions of rough surfaces such as skin to simulate the changes in surface BRDF under stretching and compression. We begin by measuring microfacet distributions at 5-micron scale of several surface patches under controlled deformation. Generally speaking, rough surfaces become flatter and thus shinier as...

Time-offset interaction is a new technology that allows for two-way communication with a person who is not available for conversation in real time: a large set of statements are prepared in advance, and users access these statements through natural conversation that mimics face-to-face interaction. Conversational reactions to user questions are ret...

Time-offset interaction is a new technology that allows for two-way communication with a person who is not available for conversation in real time: a large set of statements are prepared in advance, and users access these statements through natural conversation that mimics face-to-face interaction. Conversational reactions to user questions are ret...

Overview In 2008, the "Digital Emily" project [Alexander et al. 2009] showed how a set of high-resolution facial expressions scanned in a light stage could be rigged into a real-time photoreal digital character and driven with video-based facial animation techniques. However, Digital Emily was rendered offline, involved just the front of the face,...

When scanning an actor's face in multiple static facial expressions, it is often desirable for the resulting scans to all have the same topology and for the textures to all be in the same UV space. Such "corresponded" scans would enable the straightforward creation of blendshape-based facial rigs. We present Vuvuzela, a semi-automated facial scan c...

We present a technique for creating realistic facial animation from a set of high-resolution static scans of an actor's face driven by passive video of the actor from one or more viewpoints. We capture high-resolution static geometry using multi-view stereo and gradient-based photometric stereo [Ghosh et al. 2011]. The scan set includes around 30 e...

Blendshape interpolation is one of the most successful techniques for creating emotive digital characters for entertainment and simulation purposes. The quest for ever more realistic digital characters has pushed for higher resolution blendshapes. Many existing correspondence techniques, however, have difficulty establishing correspondences between...

We present a semi-automatic technique for computing surface correspondences between 3D facial scans in different expressions, such that scan data can be mapped into a common domain for facial animation. The technique can accurately correspond high-resolution scans of widely differing expressions -- without requiring intermediate pose sequences -- s...

The Digital Emily Project uses advanced face scanning, character rigging, performance capture, and compositing to achieve one of the world's first photorealistic digital facial performances. The project scanned the geometry and reflectance of actress Emily O'Brien's face in 33 poses, showing different emotions, gaze directions, and lip formations i...

The Digital Emily Project is a collaboration between facial animation company Image Metrics and the Graphics Laboratory at the University of Southern California's Institute for Creative Technologies to achieve one of the world's first photorealistic digital facial performances. The project leverages latest-generation techniques in high-resolution f...

This course describes how high-resolution face scanning, advanced character rigging, and performance-driven facial animation were combined to create Digital Emily, a believably photorealistic digital actor. Actress Emily O'Brien was scanned in the USC ICT light stage in 35 different facial poses using a new high-resolution face-scanning process cap...