Virtual people: capturing human models to populate virtual worlds

A new technique is introduced for automatically building recognisable moving 3D models of individual people. Realistic modelling of people is essential for advanced multimedia, augmented reality and immersive virtual reality. Current systems for whole-body model capture are based on active 3D sensing to measure the shape of the body surface. Such systems are prohibitively expensive and do not enable capture of high-quality photo-realistic colour. This results in geometrically accurate but unrealistic human models. The goal of this research is to achieve automatic low cost modelling of people suitable for personalised avatars to populate virtual worlds. A model based approach is presented for automatic reconstruction of recognisable avatars from a set of low cost colour images of a person taken from four orthogonal views. A generic 3D human model represents both the human shape and kinematic joint structure. The shape of a specific person is captured by mapping 2D silhouette information from the orthogonal view colour images onto the generic 3D model. Colour texture mapping is achieved by projecting the set of images onto the deformed 3D model. This results in the capture of a recognisable 3D facsimile of an individual person suitable for articulated movement in a virtual world. The system is low cost, requires single shot capture, is reliable for large variations in shape and size and can cope with clothing of moderate complexity.