Title
Real-time expression transfer for facial reenactment
Abstract
We present a method for the real-time transfer of facial expressions from an actor in a source video to an actor in a target video, thus enabling the ad-hoc control of the facial expressions of the target actor. The novelty of our approach lies in the transfer and photorealistic re-rendering of facial deformations and detail into the target video in a way that the newly-synthesized expressions are virtually indistinguishable from a real video. To achieve this, we accurately capture the facial performances of the source and target subjects in real-time using a commodity RGB-D sensor. For each frame, we jointly fit a parametric model for identity, expression, and skin reflectance to the input color and depth data, and also reconstruct the scene lighting. For expression transfer, we compute the difference between the source and target expressions in parameter space, and modify the target parameters to match the source expressions. A major challenge is the convincing re-rendering of the synthesized target face into the corresponding video stream. This requires a careful consideration of the lighting and shading design, which both must correspond to the real-world environment. We demonstrate our method in a live setup, where we modify a video conference feed such that the facial expressions of a different person (e.g., translator) are matched in real-time.
Year
DOI
Venue
2015
10.1145/2816795.2818056
ACM Transactions on Graphics
Keywords
Field
DocType
faces,real-time,depth camera,expression transfer
Computer vision,Parametric model,Computer graphics (images),Expression (mathematics),Computer science,Facial expression,Artificial intelligence,RGB color model,Parameter space,Novelty,Videoconferencing,Computer graphics
Journal
Volume
Issue
ISSN
34
6
0730-0301
Citations 
PageRank 
References 
84
1.70
41
Authors
6
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
Justus Thies146923.44
Michael Zollhöfer285242.25
Matthias Nießner3137367.28
Levi Valgaerts447015.88
Marc Stamminger51465112.74
Christian Theobalt63211159.16