Disney technique to produce more realistic faces

Scientists at Disney Research Zurich (DRZ) have developed a novel technique that captures unique eye traits to produce more realistic faces.

The team, noting the significant variation in eyes between individuals, devised the technique using multiple cameras and varied lighting for faithfully capturing those features.

This unprecedented level of detail enables the creation of an eye model that both captures the look of the person's eye and can duplicate how it responds to changes in lighting.

"Creating a photo-realistic digital human is one of the grand challenges of computer graphics, but despite intense research on capturing actors' faces, little attention to date has been given to the eye, particularly its shape," explained Pascal Berard, a Ph.D student in computer graphics at Disney Research Zurich and ETH Zurich.

Generically modelled eyes may be sufficient for background characters but it now takes significant effort to manually create realistic eyes for actors and other leading characters.

"Our reconstruction technique can greatly reduce the time spent and help increase the realism of the eye," he said.

The research team demonstrated their techniques by reconstructing nine different eyes from six different actors "highlighting the marked differences in shape, colouring and iris deformation between them".

They also combined both of the captured eyes of one actor with a face scan to show how their method could be used to create artistic digital doubles.

"Such a result would traditionally take significant artistic skill and man-hours to generate, in particular, if it was meant to closely resemble a real actor," Berard pointed out.

Berard and his colleagues presented the findings at "SIGGRAPH Asia 2014a in China's Shenzhen city.