Hi Carl, On Sep 24, 2008, at 12:28 PM, Carl Kenner wrote:
> I disagree with the call for recognition+trigger. I don't really want > tracking 3D points, but rather tracking whether each eye is open or > closed, how much your eyebrows are raised, where your eyes are > looking, how much are you smiling, that sort of thing. I don't think > there is all that much potential for incomprehensible poses. I want > people to be able to keep one eye closed for example, rather than just > triggering a wink, and to be able to smile a certain amount for a > certain length of time, rather than just triggering a smile gesture. > Could be you're right. May be I'd be happily surprised by the robustness of face tracking methods. I also need to mention that I envisioned "recognition+trigger" as that would be a solution that would require no change on the server side. Your point about the length of the gestures though is well taken. > I vote for default motions too, I assume they just haven't been added > yet because they require decision making about what parts of the face > are controllable. > Jani was talking about work done on the bone structure of faces. One could also use shape blending for face anim (as SL does I think). That's good for canned anims but not for free form (or not easily that is, one can imagine though to reduce the anim to a list of reference to known preloaded meshes and adequate weight for each). I've been discussing this with some folks who know a lot about facial animation and they prefer shape blending approaches as it creates more pleasing results and claim that a set of 60 meshes would cover all the emotion need. That's debatable. One question to Jani and Tomi though: I understand shape blending shortcoming for skeletal animation (we don't want that) but, is shape blending something under consideration for rex avatars faces? Cheers, - Philippe > > 2008/9/25 Philippe Bossut <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>: > >> >> Hi guys, >> >> Thanks for all the answers. This is very interesting. There are >> actually 2 dimensions in that discussion: >> >> 1- mocap (motion capture) or emotion capture: It's interesting to see >> that you thought about mocap from the get go. As you know (at least >> the guys I met in LA at VWExpo :) ), I've a vested interest to make >> something like that working (see my work at http:// >> www.handsfree3d.com/) and it's just fitting that Jani challenges me >> to "just do it" :) We're trying to bring a much livelier experience >> to VW and are considering moving our work to rex because of its >> superior avatar model compared to SL. Porting the puppeteering is one >> thing but the face animation quite another. One idea I had was to >> "recognize and trigger" emotions rather than do pure mocap (for the >> face that is, the body is another problem). The reason behind this is >> that precise tracking of all elements in a face is rather difficult >> and that bad tracking of just a couple of points could result in very >> unpleasing and incomprehensible poses. It's okay when animating a >> robot or a snowman but, if you use your own FaceGen mesh with your >> own face, that could be very unpleasing (you don't want your avatar's >> face look contorted...). On the other hand, existing emotion anims >> (like the ones existing in SL) are perfectly understandable by others >> seeing them. Since the goal is to communicate emotion in a meaningful >> and pleasing way, it seems that "recognition+trigger" rather than >> "tracking" would be more efficient in that case. There are techniques >> developed to do just that (recognition I mean) which seem to work >> well under a wide range of capture conditions (see the talk "The >> Human Face" in http://www.photomarketing.com/6sightliveUpload/ >> Default/ >> day1/day1_video_11.html). Also, thanks to Carl for suggesting some >> other pointers. >> >> 2- default motion: even if we're successful in implementing webcam >> emotion capture, we (as a group) need to recognize that not everybody >> will have such a camera and, even though, not everybody will *want* >> to have it plugged in while in VW (sometimes it's appropriate, >> sometimes it's not). This is when a good "default motion" is >> important as it improves the copresence feel a great deal. The anims >> currently available in SL are rather pleasing and I'd encourage the >> rex community to implement something similar. The eyes in particular >> are very important for this feeling of copresence to set in. For more >> on "copresence", check out the work of Jeremy Bailenson at : http:// >> vhil.stanford.edu/. Read in particular "The Independent and >> Interactive Effects of Embodied-Agent Appearance and Behavior on >> Self- Report, Cognitive, and Behavioral Markers of Copresence in >> Immersive Virtual Environments". >> >> Cheers, >> - Philippe >> >> On Sep 24, 2008, at 9:26 AM, Antti Ilomäki wrote: >> >> >>> >>> Having your actual facial expressions modeled in the virtual reality >>> would be great, but in the meantime simply having the avatar do some >>> simple stuff by itself would probably be a cost-effective immersion >>> booster. >>> >>> 2008/9/24 Carl Kenner <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>: >>> >>>> >>>> The Emotiv Epoc can record the user's face movements. It can record >>>> eyebrow position, eyelid position, horizontal eye position, how >>>> much >>>> they are smiling, clenching their teeth, and how much they are >>>> smirking to the left or right side, and whether they are >>>> laughing. On >>>> the other hand, the Neural Impulse Actuator can only record >>>> horizontal >>>> eye position, and it records that badly. >>>> So if you can make sure those control points are implemented, >>>> people >>>> with an Emotiv Epoc will be able to use it. >>>> >>>> I'm not sure how best to do it with a webcam though. >>>> >>>> 2008/9/24 Jani Pirkola <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>: >>>> >>>>> Hi Philippe, >>>>> >>>>> we are exploring possibilities to animate faces. Currently the >>>>> basic woman >>>>> has bones inside face, so she could be animated - then man does >>>>> not because >>>>> we want first to figure out what the bone structure should be to >>>>> make it >>>>> work well. Our original plan was to make that working during the >>>>> spring, but >>>>> we needed to postpone that work. The idea at that time was to >>>>> integrate web >>>>> camera and record user's face movements and overlay them using >>>>> control >>>>> points to the avatar. There seems to be only proprietary >>>>> solutions to that >>>>> so our GPL license for the viewer does not help either. >>>>> >>>>> Now we do not have exact plans when and who does that work, but >>>>> it is like >>>>> you said; it enhances greatly the feeling of presence and needs >>>>> to be done >>>>> at some point. Help would be appreciated! >>>>> >>>>> Best regards, >>>>> Jani >>>>> >>>>> 2008/9/24 Philippe Bossut <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> >>>>> >>>>>> >>>>>> Hi, >>>>>> I've a generic question to ask about rex avatars (tried the same >>>>>> one on >>>>>> IRC but no one answered so, trying here). I notice that, >>>>>> contrarily to SL's >>>>>> avatars, rex's avatars do not "blink". Actually, they do not >>>>>> blink nor they >>>>>> move their eyeballs or move their heads about. This gives very >>>>>> little >>>>>> "copresence" to the avatar (no feeling of "being there with >>>>>> someone else"). >>>>>> Any idea why this is that way? Was there a conscious decision to >>>>>> take that >>>>>> out of the rexviewer? >>>>>> Alternatively, I noticed that anims like "breathing" are on... >>>>>> Cheers, >>>>>> - Philippe >>>>>> >>>>>> >>>>> >>>>> >>>>> >>>>>> >>>>>> >>>>> >>>>> >>>> >>>> >>>>> >>>>> >>>> >>>> >>> >>> >>>> >>>> >> >> >> >>> >>> >> >> > > > > --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ http://groups.google.com/group/realxtend -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
