High-Quality Single-Shot Capture of Facial Geometry

To appear: Proceedings of ACM SIGGRAPH (Los Angeles, USA, July 25-29, 2010), ACM Transactions on Graphics, vol. 29, no. 3

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Abstract
This paper describes a passive stereo system for capturing the 3D geometry of a face in a single-shot under standard light sources. The system is low-cost and easy to deploy. Results are sub-millimeter accurate and commensurate with those from state-of-the-art systems based on active lighting, and the models meet the quality requirements of a demanding domain like the movie industry. Recovered models are shown for captures from both high-end cameras in a studio setting and from a consumer binocular-stereo camera, demonstrating scalability across a spectrum of camera deployments, and showing the potential for 3D face modeling to move beyond the professional arena and into the emerging consumer market in stereoscopic photography. Our primary technical contribution is a modification of standard stereo refinement methods to capture pore-scale geometry, using a qualitative approach that produces visually realistic results. The second technical contribution is a calibration method suited to face capture systems. The systemic contribution includes multiple demonstrations of system robustness and quality. These include capture in a studio setup, capture off a consumer binocular-stereo camera, scanning of faces of varying gender and ethnicity and age, capture of highly-transient facial expression, and scanning a physical mask to provide ground-truth validation.

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