CA2457839A1

CA2457839A1 - Automatic 3d modeling system and method

Info

Publication number: CA2457839A1
Application number: CA002457839A
Authority: CA
Inventors: Young Harvill
Original assignee: Individual
Current assignee: Callahan Cellular LLC
Priority date: 2001-08-14
Filing date: 2002-08-14
Publication date: 2003-02-27
Anticipated expiration: 2022-08-14
Also published as: WO2003017206A9; CN1628327A; CN1628327B; CA2457839C; CA2690826C; CA2690826A1; JP2011159329A; WO2003017206A1; JP2008102972A; MXPA04001429A; JP2005523488A; EP1425720A1

Abstract

An automatic 3D modeling system and method are described in which a 3D model may be generated from a picture or other image. For example, a 3D model for a face of a person may be automatically generated. The system and method also permits gestures/behaviors associated with a 3D model to automatically generated so that the gestures/behaviors may be applied to any 3D models.</S DOAB>

Claims

1. A method for generating a three dimensional model of an object from an image, the method comprising:
determining the boundary of the object to be modeled;
determining the location of one or more landmarks on the object to be modeled;
determining the scale and orientation of the object in the image based on the location of the landmarks;
aligning the image of the object with the landmarks with a deformation grid;
and generating a 3D model of the object based on the mapping of the image of the object to the deformation grid.

2. The method of Claim 1, wherein the boundary determining further comprises statistically directed linear integration of a field of pixels whose values differ based on the presence of an object or the presence of a background.

3. The method of Claim 1, wherein the boundary determining further comprises performing a statistically directed seed fill operation in order to remove the background around the image of the object.

4. The method of Claim 3, wherein determining the landmarks further comprises identifying features found by procedural correlation or band pass filtering and thresholding in statistically characteristic zones as determined during the boundary determination.

5. The method of Claim 4, wherein determining the landmarks further comprises determining additional landmarks based on a refinement of the boundary areas.

6. The method of Claim 5, wherein determining the landmarks further comprises adjusting the landmarks by the user.

7. A computer implemented system for generating a three dimension model of an image, the computer implemented system comprising:
a three dimensional model generation module further comprising instructions that receive an image of an object and instructions that automatically generate a three dimensional model of the object; and a gesture generation module further comprising instructions for generating a feature space and instructions for generating a gesture object corresponding to a gesture of the object so that the gesture behavior may be applied to another model of an object.

8. A method for automatically generating an automatic gesture model, the method comprising:
receiving an image of an object performing a particular gesture; and determining the movements associated with the gesture from the movement of the object to generate a gesture object wherein the gesture object further comprises a coloration change variable storing the change of coloration that occur during the gesture, a two dimensional change variable storing the change of the surface that occur during the gesture and a three dimensional change variable storing the change of the vertices associated with the object during the gesture.

9. The method of Claim 8 further comprises generating a feature space into which the gesture is mapped during the automatic gesture generation process.

10. The method of Claim 9, wherein the determining the movements further comprise determining a correlation between the feature space and the image of the object.

11. The method of Claim 9 further comprising transforming the geometric vectors and motion vectors to and from a feature space.

12. The method of Claim 9 further comprising applying changes in the coloration, texture motion and geometric motion from one model to another model using the feature space.

13. A gesture object data structure that stores data associated with a gesture for an object, comprising:

a scaler field variable storing the mapping between a feature space of the gesture and a model space of a model to permit transformation of the geometry and motion data;
a texture change variable storing changes in coloration of a model during a gesture;
a texture map change variable storing changes in the surface of the model during the gesture; and a vertices change variable storing changes in the vertices of the model during the gesture wherein the texture change variable, the texture map change variable and the vertices change variable permit the gesture to be applied to another model having a texture and vertices.