Disney Research delivers hyper-realistic animated eyeballs. From WIRED UK:
…In a paper describing the experiments entitled High-Quality Capture of Eyes, the team points that despite the human eye being “one of the central features of individual appearance”, and obviously one that is most expressive, “its shape has so far been mostly approximated in our community with gross simplifications”.
In their new approach — as described in the paper and presented at SIGGRAPH Asia 2014 last week — the team used multiple cameras and different lighting to capture all the intricacies of the human eyeball — the texture variations, colourings, veins and refractions that make it such a dynamic feature, changing every millisecond according to the environment.
They write: “We propose a novel capture system that is capable of accurately reconstructing all the visible parts of the eye: the white sclera, the transparent cornea and the non-rigidly deforming coloured iris.”
Each part behaves differently and reflects light differently, so the team decided they must be dealt with individually. The process also means a break away from the perfection of heroines of old. Eyes are asymmetrical and contain imperfections, the team points out. And most importantly, every person’s eyes are totally different from another’s.
To get enough data, the team used six cameras, including 100mm macro lenses focussed on the iris. Flash lighting using different levels of brightness and coloured LEDs were chosen to get different effects reflecting off the cornea, and actors were asked to lie on the floor wearing a headset during the process. Eleven poses were used all together, and the whole thing took about 20 minutes to complete. Images were stitched together to begin to form the basis of the eye movement — for instance, the team found ten images was enough to get the information to replicate iris deformation, while 140 were needed in total. A facial scanning system designed to reconstruct skin was used to generate the eye model….
Every Thursday is #3dthursday here at Adafruit! The DIY 3D printing community has passion and dedication for making solid objects from digital models. Recently, we have noticed electronics projects integrated with 3D printed enclosures, brackets, and sculptures, so each Thursday we celebrate and highlight these bold pioneers!
Have you considered building a 3D project around an Arduino or other microcontroller? How about printing a bracket to mount your Raspberry Pi to the back of your HD monitor? And don’t forget the countless LED projects that are possible when you are modeling your projects in 3D!
The Adafruit Learning System has dozens of great tools to get you well on your way to creating incredible works of engineering, interactive art, and design with your 3D printer! We also offer the LulzBot TAZ – Open source 3D Printer and the Printrbot Simple Metal 3D Printer in our store. If you’ve made a cool project that combines 3D printing and electronics, be sure to let us know, and we’ll feature it here!
