Introduction to Auto 3D Heads
Automatic 3D Reconstruction of human heads from a photograph!
This is an automated service where you upload a face photo of someone and receive back a good quality photo-real 3D model - rigged, textured, ready to animate, and looking just like the person in the photo. It's the result of combining decades of both practical visual effects production experience and advanced artificial intelligence. Available through this site as a WebApp or via licensing as a WebAPI, digital artists, media production teams, and software developers can integrate the power of rapid photo-realistic character creation into their production processes and software products.
Consider the real world cost to create a realistic 3D model of an actual person:
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How many hours of high-skilled modeling and revision?
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How many additional hours creating a realistic texture map?
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How many more additional hours creating an animation rig?
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What's the expense of all these skilled peoples' combined hours?
Would you like a realistic model created from your photo, plus texturing and rigging in under 5 minutes?
Animation students: Auto 3D Head is a great learning aid - animate yourself and your friends!
Application and game developers: get noticed with realistic characters or the players themselves!
Digital artists: Auto 3D Heads are a great foundation to create a close up capable photo-real models!
Animation and VFX studios: Auto 3D Heads are quick and easy digital doubles for pre-vis and crowd scenes!
Developers: consider the deeper levels of user engagement when your software includes the likeness of your users!
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Have custom or proprietary geometry? No problem! We can train our neural nets to output your format!
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Full body characters? Multiple characters? Hair? No problem! Decades of 3D experience to serve your needs!
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More accurate 3D Reconstruction? Given multiple images of the same person, our neural nets improve the result!
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Additional, powerful animation capabilities revealed to licensed parties!
Example Auto 3D Head Renders
Auto 3D Head Creation + Maya Import
Lip Sync Example
Product Details
Click each heading to show details. Click the heading again to hide them.
Each Auto 3D Head includes:
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Your own private Auto 3D Head Library.
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Access to our Auto 3D Head Creation and Editing WebApp.
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Starts with you providing a source image for 3D Reconstruction,
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Followed by Automatic 3D Reconstruction,
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An editing / refinement page provides fine-tuning.
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When done, each Auto 3D Head can be downloaded as a ZIP file containing a Maya Project directory:
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Step by step instructions describing setup and use,
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Multiple Maya scene files corresponding to different versions of Maya,
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Your custom geometry and custom texture map,
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A series of detail textures and an eye library,
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A Mel script to attach your custom geometry to our performance animation ready rig.
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If you need a copy of Maya, you can get one free if you are a student or unemployed: See here.
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If you do not use Maya, pretty much all 3D software reads OBJ geometry and JPG texture maps.
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Subject has a neutral expression,
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is well lit with soft white light,
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anything removable is off face,
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is looking straight at camera,
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camera is at eye level,
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camera is 10-15 feet away,
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zoom camera so face fills frame,
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automatic flash is on.
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Best photos for 3D Reconstruction:
Composed for 3D Reconstruction,
Un-retouched,
Natural diffuse lighting,
Neutral facial expression,
No more than 1024 wide or tall.
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Most factors impacting the quality of a 3D Reconstruction make common sense, such as having a neutral expression and a well lit image. Having the camera 10-15 feet away and zooming on the face reduces perspective, generating a more accurate reconstruction. Also, low cost consumer cameras have an auto-color balance that is triggered when using a flash. This can remove unwanted "tint shift" from area lights not being white.
Each Auto 3D Head is 3D Reconstructed by Neural Nets developed by the world's #1 Digital Forensics software, yielding the following characteristics:
5,195 vertices
10,657 edges
10.070 triangles
11,388 UVs
High detail Eyes & Inner Mouth Geometry
Reconstructed Texture Map is 1K by 1K
Maya Rigged
Ready for Performance Animation
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click for a closer view
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click for a closer view
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The quality of our models is suitable for non-close up shots in filmed media. Perfect for stunts and crowd scene usage. Fantastic for interactive media and gaming. With a few days of additional tuning by production experienced digital artists, our models are a great basis for rapid digital double creation for feature films. Start using our models in pre-vis, and after tuning use them during final production. Essentially, if you do realistic visual effects or 3D animation with humans, using our Auto 3D Heads are a significant production expense reduction.
Here's examples of the custom reconstruction and detail texture maps you will receive:
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In addition to the headMtl UV group, which is what the texture at left is for, UV Groups
exist for the right and left eyeballs, left and right cornea, the iris, tongue, and the teeth.
We provide example detail textures like these, plus a mini-library of colored eyeballs:
Not yet available are libraries of textures, shaders and other add ons for you to choose between.
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Each of the Maya Scene Files provides the same rig and functionality, the different versions are simply for different versions of Maya. The rig was created by professional Character Riggers moonlighting from well known animation studios, and provides the following features:
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Line-of-sight controls for duel and individual eye control
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Individual controls for left & right eyebrows, eye lids, cheeks, lips and so forth for the various facial features
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Subtle controls for enhanced emotions, such as iris scale, nose flex, flare and pull
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Higher level expression controls such as Kiss, Smirk, Frown, Disgust, Sad, Fear, Anger, Joy
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Extended lip controls as well as 8 different phonemes for lip sync animation
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Extended tongue controls for licking lips, and various sultry expressions
There are three Use Licenses available for Auto 3D Heads, making it easy for anyone to use Auto 3D Heads in their work:
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Noncommercial Use License
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Private individuals using Auto 3D Head for personal, noncommercial use only. (show/hide examples)
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For example: use within a non-income earning hobby, learning, or entertainment experience;
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For example: use within the personal demo reel and employment resume of a digital artist or software engineer.
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Commercial organizations using Auto 3D Heads for internal planning and project/production pre-visualization, as long as the end-users of the produced planning and pre-visualization media is the project/production itself. (show/hide examples)
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For example: pre-visualization during live, filmed, animated or interactive media production planning.
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For example: architectural pre-visualizations presented to prospective architecture clients.
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Non-Featured Commercial Use License
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One or more Auto 3D Heads used within any product or service, or within advertising and marketing for any product or service whereby none of the Auto 3D Heads used are a featured component of the product or service or is a featured aspect of the advertising and marketing of the product or service. (show/hide examples)
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For example: within end-user delivered filmed or animated or interactive media, using Auto 3D Head derived models as "extras" for use in "public scenes";
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For example: within end-user delivered filmed or animated or interactive media, using Auto 3D Head derived models as characters, character doubles, stunt doubles or other non-featured random humans, as long as those characters are not of real-world famous or real-world celebrity or real-world individuals with any public, marketable persona.
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Featured Commercial Use License
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One or more Auto 3D Heads used within a product or service, or within advertising and marketing for a product or service whereby at least one of the Auto 3D Heads used are a featured component of the product or service or is a featured aspect of the advertising and marketing of the product or service. (show/hide examples)
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For example: software applications and media with the feature "insert yourself/someone-else into this game/app/video/ad";
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For example: any software application or media whereby Auto 3D Heads or Auto 3D Head technology is a promoted feature.
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Only the Non-Commercial Use and Non-Featured Commercial Use Licenses are available directly via this web site. For parties interested in a Featured Use Commercial License, please use our Contact Us form.
Note that non-profit organizations, charities, universities, colleges, other educational institutions, as well as government organizations and agencies use of Auto 3D Heads are not automatically granted a Noncommercial Use license. All use of Auto 3D Heads and Auto 3D Head technology is classified as revenue generating or non-revenue generating, regardless of how the entity generating the revenue classifies itself with government agencies. If your use of Auto 3D Heads or Auto 3D Heads technology generates revenue, donations or any financial transaction at all you must select between the Non-Featured Commercial Use License or the Featured Commercial Use License.
If you are interested in our Featured Commercial Use License, please use our Contact Us form.
With private WebAPI access, Personalized Mobile Media, Advertising, Games, and more can be created integrating Your Users into Your Media!
We're experienced neural net and 3D visual effects professionals over here. We also do custom development and production, such as:
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Custom WebAPIs integrating with your iOS/Facebook/Android app,
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Custom applications for embedded, mobile, desktop, or the cloud - we're quite experienced with all of them,
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We can train our neural nets to generate your specific geometry - with entire bodies if needed,
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Our experience spans 3D consoles, rich web media, TV commercials, VFX heavy major release feature films, and work for 3-lettered government agencies!
If you are interested in our WebAPI, custom neural nets, or other mad computer scientist stuff, please use our Contact Us form.
