An example-based approach to human body manipulation

We discuss a set of techniques based on examples for generating realistic, controllable human whole-body models. Users are assisted in automatically generating a new model or modifying an existing one by controlling the parameters provided. Our approach is based on examples and consists of three major parts. First, each example from the 3D range scanner is preprocessed so that the topology of all examples is identical. Second, the system that we call the modeling synthesizer learns from these examples the correlation between the parameters and the body geometry. After this learning process the synthesizer is devoted to the generation of appropriate shape and proportion of the body geometry through interpolation. Finally, we demonstrate bur modifier synthesizer for more subtle manipulations of example models, using high-level parameters such as fat percentage. On any synthesized model, the underlying bone and skin structure is properly adjusted, so that the model remains completely animatable using the joint animation. By allowing automatic modification from a set of parameters, our approach may eventually lead to the automatic generation of a variety of population models. (C) 2003 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.