How would one approach creating a morphable 3D model? [closed]

Question

A Morphable Model for the Synthesis of 3D Faces

The above video is over 12 years old. How was the software done?

I need something way simpler but basically the same: a morphable model (thorax) that can be altered after being pre-morphed using a picture.

Any links that might provide useful information are appreciated.

Are there any open source projects that might have helpful code that could be studied?

Answer 1

The details are all in their paper:

www.mpi-inf.mpg.de/~blanz/html/data/morphmod2.pdf

In short, you need:

1. A collection of complete 3D scans of samples of the object class you want to characterize
2. A way of performing 'non-rigid registration' to align a reference template to each sample
3. Standard statistical analysis (principal components) of the aligned samples

Note that their choice of the name 'Morphable Model' is misleading. They are referring to something much more specific than a set of difference morphs or morph targets.

Answer 2

What you need is called Morph target animation. Blender implements this, but the feature is called Shape Keys.

You can see an example of morphing at NeHe Productions.

This process works by creating a base vector of points, such as a face and a set of change vectors that contain the differences to various morph targets. A possible morph target would be smile and it would contain the offset values that added to the original face would result in a smiling face.

You can do linear combinations of morph targets and you can even create caricatures, by exaggerating the factors (original + 2*smile).