Automatic construction of 3D human face from picture

[Manuel]

Note the future of MH is python. If you want make useful test, use it.
Note the new version, python based, is organized in plugins, so fork is not needed, because each plugin can be developed in indipendent way.

[looxis]

Hi Smisra,

we have been able to use the software from Prof. Blanz for some time. The software is definitely not bad, but the software is only a prototype and the output is only the face, without hair and neck.
It's a proprietory, patented software which runs under linux. It is not publicly available, but it was recently licensed to a company named Eon Human.
As far as I understand, they want to release it as a web-application for entertainment purposes.

The Facegen software is a publicly available commercial software. The output file is in my eyes not so great in terms of recognizability.

We have ourselves developped a solution, as you proposed it. It's called Faceworx and it's free for non-commercial applications (find it at http://www.looxis.com or download.com). It has only basic capabilities and unfortunately the output looks only well inside faceworx application itself - if you export it and view it without the texture, the head file has a lot of bumps.

We are currently talking to Manuel from MH for a possible integration of this tool into MH.

Best regards

Etienne
http://www.looxis.com

[looxis]

By the way: I like the idea of "plugins" with MH.

As I said, we as a company have the Faceworx software which could be integrated as one plugin
- and another approach, such as "shape from shading," could be an alternative plugin.

Additionally to Faceworx, we have also a java-based prototype software, that creates a 3D Face out of one 2D picture with "shape from shading" algorithms.

Since MH is going to be continued in Python, is there anyone here that could port the java code to python code,
if that is at all possible... ?

Thanks

Etienne
http://www.looxis.com

[Jeremy Ray]

I'm very excited about integrating the Looxis software into MH!

I tried using FaceGen with MH it didn't integrate very well. This sounds much better!

Is there any chance of getting the Looxis software? I can attach the Looxis geometry to an MH body in Blender if it can be exported to any of the many formats Blender imports.

[looxis]

Hi Jeremy,
what do you mean by "getting the looxis software" ???

It's called Faceworx and it's free for non-commercial applications. It's available at looxis.com and download.com

thanks
etienne

http://www.looxis.com

[lloonn]

That donation of the LOOXIS sourcecode - does this mean that MH is going to take
commercial route in the next release? Faceworx is not completely free software, as
was stated earlier.

BTW, apart from already mentioned Facegen and Faceworx there are a few other applications or plugins doing the same job (some of them are quite expensive, though):
FaceShop, GenHead, Facial Studio, PeoplePutty, Face Factory 2 (from Abacus), 3DMeNow Professional/Lite, Ulead Face Factory, Reallusion utilities, a few avatar creators, face-oriented modules inside 3D modellers (for instance, it looks like there is one in now free trueSpace), several online services ...

[Manuel]

That donation of the LOOXIS sourcecode - does this mean that MH is going to take
commercial route in the next release? Faceworx is not completely free software, as
was stated earlier.

If Looxis code will be integrated, thanks to Etienne permission, it will be under same MH license (GPL).
And about the sw you mentioned: I haven't tried all them, but, generally speaking, there is a big difference between a 3d head, that *appear* similar to input face because texture trick, and a real 3d *volumetric correct* model obtained from a picture, that's similar to input face even without textures...
We are working on the second.

Regards,

Manuel

[lloonn]

That donation of the LOOXIS sourcecode - does this mean that MH is going to take commercial route in the next release? Faceworx is not completely free software, as was stated earlier.

If Looxis code will be integrated, thanks to Etienne permission, it will be under same MH license (GPL).

Thanks for the information.

And about the sw you mentioned: I haven't tried all them, but, generally speaking, there is a big difference between a 3d head, that *appear* similar to input face because texture trick, and a real 3d *volumetric correct* model obtained from a picture, that's similar to input face even without textures...
We are working on the second.

I haven't tried all of them either, however, I thought some readers of this popular thread
might be interested in the list. Yes, several avatar creators try to pull face textures on
some close to generic (or at least far from being real) head model. On the other hand, FaceGen apparently approximates a real head by the parametric one that can be constructed inside the program - that's why the result is not that impressive. Maybe
Facial Studio does the same (I am not sure right now), but it has many more head
construction parameters. To state which programs of the mentioned in the list produce
a real 3D *volumetric correct* head model obtained from a picture, I need to download the ones that I don't have now and experiment with the ones I have. However, it seems to me that at least GenHead and FaceShop have a similar approach.