ML Anthology

REFA: Real-Time Egocentric Facial Animations for Virtual Reality

Qiang Zhang, Tong Xiao, Haroun Habeeb, Larissa Laich, Sofien Bouaziz, Patrick Snape, Wenjing Zhang, Matthew Cioffi, Peizhao Zhang, Pavel Pidlypenskyi, Winnie Lin, Luming Ma, Mengjiao Wang, Kunpeng Li, Chengjiang Long, Steven Song, Martin Prazák, Alexander Sjoholm, Ajinkya Deogade, Jaebong Lee, Julio Delgado Mangas, Amaury Aubel
CVPRW 2024 pp. 4793-4802
doi:10.1109/CVPRW63382.2024.00482 /cvprw/2024/zhang2024cvprw-refa/

Abstract

We present a novel system for real-time tracking of facial expressions using egocentric views captured from a set of infrared cameras embedded in a virtual reality (VR) headset. Our technology facilitates any user to accurately drive the facial expressions of virtual characters in a non-intrusive manner and without the need of a lengthy calibration step. At the core of our system is a distillation based approach to train a machine learning model on heterogeneous data and labels coming form multiple sources, e.g. synthetic and real images. As part of our dataset, we collected 18k diverse subjects using a lightweight capture setup consisting of a mobile phone and a custom VR headset with extra cameras. To process this data, we developed a robust differentiable rendering pipeline enabling us to automatically extract facial expression labels. Our system opens up new avenues for communication and expression in virtual environments, with applications in video conferencing, gaming, entertainment, and remote collaboration.

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Cite

Text

Zhang et al. "REFA: Real-Time Egocentric Facial Animations for Virtual Reality." IEEE/CVF Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition Workshops, 2024. doi:10.1109/CVPRW63382.2024.00482

Markdown

[Zhang et al. "REFA: Real-Time Egocentric Facial Animations for Virtual Reality." IEEE/CVF Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition Workshops, 2024.](https://mlanthology.org/cvprw/2024/zhang2024cvprw-refa/) doi:10.1109/CVPRW63382.2024.00482

BibTeX

@inproceedings{zhang2024cvprw-refa,
  title     = {{REFA: Real-Time Egocentric Facial Animations for Virtual Reality}},
  author    = {Zhang, Qiang and Xiao, Tong and Habeeb, Haroun and Laich, Larissa and Bouaziz, Sofien and Snape, Patrick and Zhang, Wenjing and Cioffi, Matthew and Zhang, Peizhao and Pidlypenskyi, Pavel and Lin, Winnie and Ma, Luming and Wang, Mengjiao and Li, Kunpeng and Long, Chengjiang and Song, Steven and Prazák, Martin and Sjoholm, Alexander and Deogade, Ajinkya and Lee, Jaebong and Mangas, Julio Delgado and Aubel, Amaury},
  booktitle = {IEEE/CVF Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition Workshops},
  year      = {2024},
  pages     = {4793-4802},
  doi       = {10.1109/CVPRW63382.2024.00482},
  url       = {https://mlanthology.org/cvprw/2024/zhang2024cvprw-refa/}
}