Events

Paul Debevec SIGGRAPH Asia 2010 Speaker Tour

SIGGRAPH Asia's 2010 speaker tour (7-16 September) attracted audiences of 110-350 in five major cities. Paul Debevec, who shared a Scientific and Engineering Academy Award for his work on the LightStage device, which was used in "Avatar" and other recent films, delivered a series of provocative, revealing presentations titled: From Spider-Man to Avatar, Emily to Benjamin: Achieving Photoreal Digital Actors. The series was sponsored in part by the ACM Distinguished Speakers Program.

	7 September 2010 Paul Debevec in Beijing 8 September 2010 Paul Debevec in Seoul 10 September 2010 Paul Debevec in Hong Kong 13 September 2010 Paul Debevec in Taipei 16 September 2010 Paul Debevec in Tokyo

Talk Abstract

Somewhere between "Final Fantasy" in 2001 and "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button" in 2008, digital actors crossed the "Uncanny Valley" from looking strangely synthetic to believably real. This talk describes some of the key technological advances that have enabled this achievement.

Two technologies from our laboratory, High-Dynamic-Range Lighting and the Light Stage facial capture systems, have been used to create realistic digital characters in movies such as "Spider-Man 2", "Superman Returns", "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button", and "Avatar". For an in-depth example, the talk describes how high-resolution face scanning, advanced character rigging, and performance-driven facial animation were combined to create "Digital Emily", a collaboration between our laboratory and Image Metrics. Actress Emily O'Brien was scanned in Light Stage 5 in 33 facial poses at the resolution of skin pores and fine wrinkles. These scans were assembled into a rigged face model driven by Image Metrics' video-based animation software, and the resulting photoreal facial animation premiered at SIGGRAPH 2008.

The talk also presents a 3D teleconferencing system that uses live facial scanning and an autostereoscopic display to transmit a person's face in 3D and make eye contact with remote collaborators, and a new head-mounted facial performance-capture system based on photometric stereo.

Paul Debevec is Associate Director of Graphics Research at the University of Southern California's Institute for Creative Technologies and a Research Associate Professor in USC's Viterbi School of Engineering's Computer Science Department. His ACM SIGGRAPH involvement includes:

ACM SIGGRAPH Executive Committee Director-At-Large, 2009-

SIGGRAPH 2007 Computer Animation Festival Chair

ACM SIGGRAPH Distinguished Lecturer, 2008

Contributor to SIGGRAPH Technical Papers, Courses, Talks, Panels, Computer Animation Festival, and Art Gallery

Reviewer for SIGGRAPH Technical Papers, Courses, Talks, Emerging Technologies, and Computer Animation Festival

Member of ACM SIGGRAPH and the Los Angeles SIGGRAPH Chapter

Honorary member of Perth SIGGRAPH Chapter