Image-Based Avatar Reconstruction

Highly accurate avatars of humans promise a new level of realism in engineering and entertainment applications, including areas such as computer animated movies, computer game development, interactive virtual environments and telepresence. In order to provide high-quality avatars, new techniques for the automatic acquisition and creation are required. A framework for the capture and construction of arbitrary avatars from image data is presented in this paper. Avatars are automatically reconstructed from multiple static images of a human subject by utilizing image information to reshape a synthetic three-dimensional articulated reference model. Primary stages in this pipeline include pose estimation, skeleton fitting, body part segmentation, geometry reconstruction, and texture mapping, leading to avatars that can be animated and included into interactive environments. The presented system removes traditional constraints in the initial pose of the captured subject by adjusting a kinematic skeleton expressed in dual quaternions using finite-position kinematic synthesis. Posteriorly, to reconstruct the avatar we use silhouette-based modification techniques in combination with a reference model.