Systems and Methods for Generating a Skull Surface for Computer Animation
AssigneeWeta Digital Limited
InventorByung Kuk Choi
Life of this patent
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Abstract
An animation system wherein a machine learning model is adopted to generate animated facial actions based on parameters obtained from a live actor. Specifically, the anatomical structure such as a facial muscle topology and a skull surface that are specific to the live actor may be used. A skull surface that is specific to a live actor based on facial scans of the live actor and generic tissue depth data. For example, the facial scans of the live actor may provide a skin surface topology of the live actor, based on which the skull surface underneath the skin surface can be derived by “offsetting” the skin surface with corresponding soft tissue depth at different sampled points on the skin surface.
Claims20
A computer-implemented method for generating a bone surface depicting at least a portion of a skull of a live actor, the method comprising:
- obtaining a plurality of facial scans of the live actor, each facial scan including a respective skin surface and respective sensing data indicative of facial muscle strains corresponding to a set of facial muscles;
- obtaining, from a database, a tissue depth dataset including a tissue depth indicating a distance from a corresponding surface point on the human face to a skull surface underneath the human face;
- deriving a bone surface based on a skin surface generated from the plurality of facial scans and the tissue depth dataset;
- refining the bone surface based on a user input via a user interface;
- and
- refining the bone surface via a neural network by learning the plurality of facial scans and using muscle or skin parameters derived from the plurality of facial scans as ground truth labels.
(canceled)
A system for generating a bone surface depicting at least a portion of a skull of a live actor, the system comprising:
- an input interface configured to obtain a plurality of facial scans of the live actor, each facial scan including a respective skin surface and respective sensing data indicative of facial muscle strains corresponding to a set of facial muscles;
- a communication interface configured to obtain, from a database, a tissue depth dataset including a tissue depth indicating a distance from a corresponding surface point on the human face to a skull surface underneath the human face;
- one or more processors configured to:
- derive a bone surface based on a skin surface generated from the plurality of facial scans and the tissue depth dataset;
- refine the bone surface based on a user input via a user interface;
- and
- refine the bone surface via a neural network by learning the plurality of facial scans and using muscle or skin parameters derived from the plurality of facial scans as ground truth labels
(canceled)
A computer-readable non-transitory medium storing computer-executable instructions for generating a bone surface depicting at least a portion of a skull of a live actor, the computer-executable instructions being executed by one or more processors to perform operations comprising:
- obtaining a plurality of facial scans of the live actor, each facial scan including a respective skin surface and respective sensing data indicative of facial muscle strains corresponding to a set of facial muscles;
- obtaining, from a database, a tissue depth dataset including a tissue depth indicating a distance from a corresponding surface point on the human face to a skull surface underneath the human face;
- deriving a bone surface based on a skin surface generated from the plurality of facial scans and the tissue depth dataset;
- refining the bone surface based on a user input via a user interface;
- and
- refining the bone surface via a neural network by learning the plurality of facial scans and using muscle or skin parameters derived from the plurality of facial scans as ground truth labels.
(canceled)
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.