Sarris N., Strintzis M.G. 3D Modeling and Animation: Synthesis and Analysis Techniques for the Human Body

IRM Press, 2005. — 407 p.The emergence of virtual reality applications and human-like interfaces has given rise to the necessity of producing realistic models of the human body. Building and animating a synthetic, cartoon-like, model of the human body has been practiced for many years in the gaming industry and advances in the game platforms have led to more realistic models, although still cartoon-like. The issue of building a virtual human clone is still a matter of ongoing research and relies on effective algorithms which will determine the 3D structure of an actual human being and duplicate this with a three-dimensional graphical model, fully textured, by correct mapping of 2D images of the human on the 3D model.
Realistic human animation is also a matter of ongoing research and, in the case of human cloning, relies on accurate tracking of the 3D motion of a human, which has to be duplicated by his 3D model. The inherently complex articulation of the human body imposes great difficulties in both the tracking and animation processes, which are being tackled by specific techniques, such as modeling languages, as well as by standards developed for these purposes. Particularly the human face and hands present the greatest difficulties in modeling and animation due to their complex articulation and communicative importance in expressing the human language and emotions.
Within the context of this book, we present the state-of-the-art methods for analyzing the structure and motion of the human body in parallel with the most effective techniques for constructing realistic synthetic models of virtual humans. The level of detail that follows is such that the book can prove useful to students, researchers and software developers. That is, a level low enough to describe modeling methods and algorithms without getting into image processing and programming principles, which are not considered as prerequisite for the target audience.
The main objective of this book is to provide a reference for the state-of-theart methods delivered by leading researchers in the area, who contribute to the appropriate chapters according to their expertise. The reader is presented with the latest, research-level, techniques for the analysis and synthesis of still and moving human bodies, with particular emphasis on facial and gesture characteristics.
Attached to this preface, the reader will find an introductory chapter which revises the state-of-the-art on established methods and standards for the analysis and synthesis of images containing humans. The most recent vision-based human body modeling techniques are presented, covering the topics of 3D human body coding standards, motion tracking, recognition and applications. Although this chapter, as well as the whole book, examines the relevant work in the context of computer vision, references to computer graphics techniques are given, as well.
The most relevant international standard established, MPEG-4, is briefly discussed in the introductory chapter, while its latest amendments, offering an appropriate framework for the animation and coding of virtual humans, is described in detail in Chapter
2. In particular, in this chapter Preda et al. show how this framework is extended within the new MPEG-4 standardization process by allowing the animation of any kind of articulated models, while addressing advanced modeling and animation concepts, such as Skeleton, Muscle and Skin-based approaches.
The issue of camera calibration is of generic importance to any computer vision application and is, therefore, addressed in a separate chapter by Lei, Hendriks and Katsaggelos. Thus, Chapter 3 presents a comprehensive overview of passive camera calibration techniques by comparing and evaluating existing approaches. All algorithms are presented in detail so that they can be directly implemented.
The detection of the human body and the recognition of human activities and hand gestures from multiview images are examined by Ozer, Lv and Wolf in Chapter 4_. Introducing the subject, the authors provide a review of the main components of three-dimensional and multiview visual processing techniques. The real-time aspects of these techniques are discussed and the ways in which these aspects affect the software and hardware architectures are shown. The authors also present the multiple-camera system developed by their group to investigate the relationship between the activity recognition algorithms and the architectures required to perform these tasks in real-time.
Gesture analysis is also discussed by Karpouzis et al. in Chapter 5, along with facial expression analysis within the context of human emotion recognition. A holistic approach to emotion modeling and analysis is presented along with applications in Man-Machine Interaction, aiming towards the next-generation interfaces that will be able to recognize the emotional states of their users.
The face, being the most expressive and complex part of the human body, is the object of discussion in the following five chapters as well. Chapter 6 examines techniques for the analysis of facial motion aiming mainly to the understanding of expressions from monoscopic images or image sequences. In Chapter 7 Eisert also addresses the same problem with his methods, paying particular attention to understanding and normalizing the illumination of the scene. Kalberer, Müller and Van Gool present their work in Chapter 8, extending the state-of-the-art in creating highly realistic lip and speech-related facial motion.
The deformation of three-dimensional human face models guided by the facial features captured from images or image sequences is examined in Chapters 9 and 10_. Kampmann and Zhang propose a solution of varying complexity applicable to video-conferencing systems, while Wen et al. present a framework, based on machine learning, for the modeling, analysis and synthesis of facial deformation.
The book concludes with Chapter 11, by Karatzoulis, Davarakis and Tzovaras, providing a reference to current relevant R&D projects worldwide. This closing chapter presents a number of promising applications and provides an overview of recent developments and techniques in the area of analysis and synthesis techniques for the human body. Technical details are provided for each project and the provided results are also discussed and evaluated.Advances in Vision-Based Human Body Modeling
Virtual Character Definition and Animation within the MPEG-4 Standard
Camera Calibration for 3D Reconstruction and View Transformation
Real-Time Analysis of Human Body Parts and Gesture-Activity Recognition in 3D
Facial Expression and Gesture Analysis for Emotionally-Rich Man-Machine Interaction
Techniques for Face Motion & Expression Analysis on Monocular Images
Analysis and Synthesis of Facial Expressions
Modeling and Synthesis of Realistic Visual Speech in 3D
Automatic 3D Face Model Adaptation with Two Complexity Modes for Visual Communication
Learning 3D Face Deformation Model: Methods and Applications
Synthesis and Analysis Techniques for the Human Body: R&D Projects