Feb 25, 2007
Incredible morphable facial model
I hate blogs where they post a single video clip and expect the viewer to just watch with little to no idea of what they’re about to watch. You’re just expected to give up a few minutes of your life by trusting that you have the same sense of humor or intrigue as the offer. I’m going to be better than 99% of the blogs out there and going to describe for you what you’ll be watching if you decide to click play on the video below.
A research lab in Germany has developed a software engine that, after taking 200 3D scans of human faces, can scan a single 2D picture or photograph, and will generate a very realistic 3D model which can be used to synthesize the movement of the face for speech or expression changes. It is remarkably realistic, and I can’t wait to see it’s application in movies and other moving mediums.
UPDATE (August 10, 2007): There have been advancements made to his software collection. Read about them here.
[...] morphable facial model Very cool image modeling technology. Maybe CSI will actually seem realistic, someday. Published [...]
While yes, I admit that this would be interesting in movies, I think it’ll be more interesting in court cases. For a while, before the law is adjusted, movies will continue to be admissible evidence in court. And 3-d modeling makes changing one person’s face to another’s extremely easy. So we’re going to have at least a few months in which people will be going around getting other people implicated for crimes.
It would also be interesting when applied to blackmail, ’cause public knowledge can also take a long time to catch up. We’ll have maybe five years before threatening to release very good faked videos will loose its power.
Yes, I realize that thinking like this probably makes me a horrible person. Oh well.
I hate to admit, but I was thinking the same way as NOSPOON. This will just start as a way to fake videos for gain.
Very impressive, anyway.
Ah, now let’s take some pictures of Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and Rice and set up a nice video with them telling the truth just for once. Wouldn’t that be terrific? Mail a copy to Al Jizzeera
hahaha nice ideas starting to crop up!!
i would love to see Tony Blair rapping one day, or 50 cent talking about politics
This is some serious Ghost In The Shell s**t. When this gets popularized, people will start getting their faces copyrighted. It’ll get included in birth certification and people will get sued for looking like celebrities.
That’s pretty funny.
This will be used in video games more than anything else. You will be the main character and the main character will have your voice and face.
It doesn’t have Just negative security issues. Some are positive. For example, if you have a fragmentary image of some convicted homicidal maso/sadistic rapist, you could create a 360 degree digital image of the person and send that model to police agencies all over the nation, or the world. Cameras could scan the faces of people on streets, in airports, everywhere – making a clean getaway a little bit more impossible. Which, of course, infringes upon personal privacy but i think the benefits outweigh the drawbacks. Hopefully, political administration could create the necessary laws beforehand so that the technology won’t be abused or have some overly negative impact on society (like China and it’s fervor to become a major power, therefore taking a toll on humans and the environment alike – but that’s beside the point).
Jails have lots of innocent people,inside the walls,because of eye witnesses who swear on a bible that the person they saw was the same as the one on trial.THINK what is going to happen,when realistic facial masks will be able to be created with this same sort of technology. Just get a mask made of your buddy,grab a fist load of his hair,when he is drunk,and passed out, Go do a crime,sprinkle his hair around the crime scene,make sure you are seen by at least two different reliable witnesses.
While he is in jail,visit his wife every day,to console and help her….
I soooooo agree with our next primerib minister Earle ^^ .. however I would suggest, in order to lend more credibility to said morphication and sprinklink of folicular evidentia, that at least 1 of those witnesses be said vilans wife.. thus rending her in greater need of said “consolation”. Also .. please be confident and have affidavits asserting you are indeed a prize.
Oh .. and George Bush is already a morph.
I’m always a skeptic. Although I can believe that the technology is there to do this (though I don’t think the initial setup and rendering is quite as “instantaneous” as they make it appear) how do we know they did not model the 3 examples they gave with traditional means (3d artist) and then apply their algorithms for morphing the face to that model? On another note everyone here is wrong, the first application for this will of course be 3D porn.
[...] interesting post about the implications of advanced computer modeling in creating 3-D videos from still photographs. Don’t miss the [...]
this is pretty old stuff – presented at SIGGRAPH in 1999…
Really cool. Unfortunately, as many said already, this can be used against innocent people. I suppose it’s better that the public knows about it than just the criminals anyway.
Is it just me, or does the face at 3:38 look like Adam Sandler to anyone else?
How could you show Mona Lisa without varying the smile!!!!
this has the potential to fabricate evidence in a jury trial.
[...] through Alicebot.org, a post on Flawedlogic.org showing an incredible face image scanner. A few more of these breakthroughs and then the future is [...]
Great product. I can see many usful applications for this product. When wll it be available? Will I be able to afford it?
I don’t think this will be effective for faking videos for court changes to the persons face will probably be detectable in the same way that it’s possible for a computer to detect photoshop’d images.
[...] few months ago, I had posted a video on this very website about software developed that could analyze a single photograph or even a [...]
[...] images and interactive techniques) have done it again and amazed the goddamned pants off me. First they debuted the software that took a 2D image of a face and could generate a realistic 3D model from it. Then they took that [...]
Unfortunately in the wrong hands this could be used to make videos of people like Obama or Osama claiming to have done things they did not do etc.