The Technology
The challenge of turning facial images and planar shapes into caricatures has been the topic of many research projects. Previously, a controllable approach for caricaturization of surfaces embedded in R3 has been introduced. The technique is driven by intrinsic features of the surface and as such, remains invariant under isometric transformations. The proposed method locally models the geometric structure of the surface using its Gaussian curvature, and solves a corresponding Poisson equation. Its power is demonstrated by applying it to a variety of triangulated meshes, such as faces, statues and animals. The resulting caricatures show unprecedented enhancement and exaggeration of the shape features. The problem arises when enhancing shape features in sync with a sound in correlation with its power. Feature enhancement is an unstable process. No other solution exists for creating a caricature out of a shape based on sound. Given a sound signal, the surface feature enhancement parameter in each time frame is calculated as a function of its absolute value. The surface enhancement process is made by scaling the gradient fields of the surface coordinate functions with the absolute value of the Gaussian curvature in the power of the aforementioned enhancement parameter. In order to find the coordinates of the enhanced surface which best fits the scaling, a Poisson equation is solved. For creating a video clip of sound-based surface feature enhancement, images of the enhanced surface are created for a set of enhancement parameters. In each video frame, the enhancement parameter is calculated and the image with the closest parameter to the calculated one is chosen (as in a look-up table).
Advantages
- Synchronizes surface feature enhancements with sound
- The surface enhancement mechanism is invariant to the isometrics of the surface
- The user is able to create a video clip of his facial features enhanced
Applications and Opportunities
- Online depth-video based surface enhancement
- Depth camera-based games developers and SDK developers
- Music-based game developers
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