facecapture
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Disney makes facial capture tech more practical for movies
If you don't see facial motion capture everywhere in movies and video games, there's probably a good reason for it. In order to train a capture system to match expressions, you frequently have to record the actor making all kinds of faces in different conditions... that's a lot of effort, especially for studios that don't have much time or money. Disney Research has a better way. It recently developed a face capture system that uses only a tiny number of recordings and synthetically generates the data you need to train the system. The solution is a uniformly-lit multi-camera rig (only one camera is active, the rest are for lighting) that creates an adjustable 3D model of the actor's face that you can use to create the info you need.
Apple buys motion-capture company that worked on 'Star Wars'
Apple's latest startup pickup is Faceshift, a company that specializes in facial motion capture -- often doing it without any need for physical "markers" on the model's face. Cupertino confirmed the deal to Techcrunch, which also discovered that several Faceshift employees are already working for Apple in Europe. While a lot of Faceshift's technical demos have focused on real-time animation based on camera-based motion capture, it also works on improving facial CGI animation in movies and other media. (That's where the Star Wars connection comes in.) It's a bit of a reach to figure out exactly how the startup's work will dovetail into Apple's machinations for the future -- but at least it's something a little more interesting than another map company.
