Conferences and events
We attended FMX 2022 in Stuttgart!
We organised a workshop at FMX 2022 in Stuttgart entitled “Volumetric Capture Technologies for Interactive Narratives” presenting the most recent advances in volumetric capture and processing technologies. Our researchers Marc Christie from University of Rennes 1, Philippe Guillotel from InterDigital and Jan Ondřej from Volograms demonstrated the impact of novel shape representations and motion retargeting techniques on 3D volumetric captured data using deep learning technologies. They also showed how these technologies could be exploited in Virtual and Augmented Reality applications to create more realistic and more interactive volumetric representations of characters. More about the event here.
Volograms wins an Augmented World Expo Auggie Award
Our partners, Volograms, attended the Augmented World Expo last June in Santa Clara, California. AWE is the most important immersive conference, and its US edition brings together the most important players in the Metaverse space, with more than 100 exhibitors and more than 2000 attendees. This year it was especially relevant for Volograms, as they were awarded with one of the conference awards, the Auggie Award for the category “Best Use of AI” for bringing volumetric video capture to the smartphone. To make it even better, the award was given by Neil Trevett, Chairman of the Metaverse Standard Forum and President of the Khronos Group. Read more about it here.
Hello Annecy International Animation Film Festival!
We were delighted to participate in the Annecy International Animation Film Festival 2022! It was exciting to learn about the latest innovations in the animation industry and the current tools that are being built on VR technologies and used for the production of animation movies. We were also very happy to demonstrate the INVICTUS open source VR tool for storytelling – VRtist – to key players in the animation industry! It was extremely valuable to hear their insightful feedback that can drive further development of the tool.
INVICTUS in South Korea
Volograms was invited at the Global Metaverse Conference in Busan, South Korea to present the work done with Inspiring Women as part of the INVICTUS Project. South Korea is among the top countries worldwide for volumetric video. What a privilege to receive their enthusiasm!
HHI and Volograms at the IBC 2022 in Amsterdam!
Our partner HHI presented their recent results on animatable interactive volumetric video at the IBC 2022 in Amsterdam! Also, Volograms was invited to participate at this amazing session about Volumetric Video for Broadcasting, Metaverse Production and RT3D Assets together with other champions in this field, such as RTE, FOX Sports, Trinity College Dublin, and Unity!
INVICTUS project is attending Stereopsia 2022!
The INVICTUS project will be participating at the Scientific Conference of Stereopsia 2022 on October 18th with the presentation: 'From efficient volumetric capture of characters to interactive controllable avatars'! Join us also at our booth at the event to learn more about the project research results and test our technologies! You can check out the programme here.
University of Rennes 1 performed a number of user experiments with expert animators!
University of Rennes 1 performed a number of user experiments with expert animators from our partner Hue Dada! Animations in Paris to gather both quantitative and qualitative information on the strengths of our VR authoring tools VRTist. Experiments consisted for the expert animators in reproducing a complex animation of a character both with a traditional tool (Unity), a VR tool with simple manipulators, and our smart manipulators using tangent optimization. Results clearly displayed the benefit of the smart manipulators, over other techniques, and the strength of coupling VR and animation for quick prototyping of sequences. Experiments were also performed with intermediate animators as well as beginners, and demonstrated the ease of use and the efficiency of the VR tools over traditional techniques.
Experience sharing and forward-looking in XR EU funded projects
The Project Coordinator Marc Christie, Associate Professor at the University of Rennes 1, participated in the conference on experience sharing and forward-looking in XR EU funded projects, organized by the European Commission. This was a great opportunity to share the experience with other EU funded projects in XR and discuss future needs in Europe in this domain.
University of Rennes 1 attended 3DV 2022!
Our partner University of Rennes 1 presented the paper entitled 'Temporal Shape Transfer Network for 3D Human Motion' at the International Conference on 3D Vision 2022 (3DV 2022).
We started a collaboration project with Hue Dada!
We started working with Hue Dada! Animations on a very cool promotional video about the INVICTUS project! Stay tuned! More updates to come in the next newsletter!
Publications
Here you have the most recent INVICTUS publications. You can see our complete list of publications on our website.
Temporal Shape Transfer Network for 3D Human Motion
Research paper presented by the University of Rennes 1 at the International Conference on 3D Vision 2022 (3DV 2022). In this paper they present a learning-based approach to perform human shape transfer between an arbitrary 3D identity mesh and a temporal motion sequence of 3D meshes. Read the full paper here.
Detailed Eye Region Capture and Animation
Research paper by the University of Rennes 1 and InterDigital was presented at SIGGRAPH 2022 in Vancouver, Canada. In this paper, they propose a data-driven approach for capturing and modelling the subtle features of the human eye region, such as the inner eye corner and the skin bulging effect due to globe orientation. Read the full paper here.
Multi-View Mesh Reconstruction with Neural Deferred Shading
Presented at CVPR 2022 in New Orleans, Louisiana, this work by Fraunhofer HHI, presents the recover of geometry from calibrated input images using a differentiable mesh renderer with neural shading. See the project page here.
And that’s it!
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The INVICTUS project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 952147.