Facebook Researchers Develop Real-Time, Interactive, and Photorealistic VR Avatars

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[img src="/storage/emulated/0/Download/facebook_reuters_1557900601740.jpeg"][br][br]In a bid to make virtual reality (VR) experience highly believable, researchers from Facebook Reality Labs (FRL) have developed a revolutionary system called "Codec Avatars" that gives VR users ability to interact with others while representing themselves with life-like avatars precisely animated in real-time.[br][br]"Our work demonstrates that it is possible to precisely animate photorealistic avatars from cameras closely mounted on a VR headset," said the study's lead author Shih-En Wei, a research scientist at Facebook.[br][br]The researchers have configured a headset with minimum sensors for facial capture and their system enables two-way, authentic social interaction in VR.[br][br]The team said the VR system can animate avatar heads with highly detailed personal likeness by precisely tracking users' real-time facial expressions using a minimum set of headset-mounted cameras (HMC).[br]"By comparing these converted images using every pixel--not just sparse facial features--and the renderings of the 3D avatar," noted Wei.[br][br]"We can precisely map between the images from tracking headset and the status of the 3D avatar through differentiable rendering. After the mapping is established, we train a neural network to predict face parameter from a minimal set of camera images in real time," Wei added.[br][br]Besides animating the avatars in VR, Facebook's team is also building systems that may enable people to quickly and easily create their avatars from just a few images or videos.[br][br]The Facebook team will demonstrate their RR real-time facial animation system at "SIGGRAPH 2019", which is set to be held in Los Angeles between July 28-August 1. [br][br]The researchers will present an artificial intelligence (AI) technique based on Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs) that performs consistent multi-view image style translation to automatically convert HMC infrared images to images that look like a rendered avatar but with the same facial expression of the VR user.[br][br]So many interesting features being added to the apps. Interesting isn't it?[br][br]Source: https://gadgets.ndtv.com/social-networking/news/facebook-researchers-develop-real-time-interactive-and-photorealistic-vr-avatars-2060244[br]