Photo Wake-Up: 3D Character Animation from a Single Photo

TL;DR

This paper introduces a novel method to animate 3D human characters from a single photo, enabling realistic movements and interactions in augmented reality and other applications.

Contribution

It presents a new 2D warping technique for fitting a 3D model to complex silhouettes and handles partial occlusions, advancing single-photo 3D human animation.

Findings

Effective animation from single photos demonstrated

User studies show high realism and usability

Interactive and AR applications successfully implemented

Abstract

We present a method and application for animating a human subject from a single photo. E.g., the character can walk out, run, sit, or jump in 3D. The key contributions of this paper are: 1) an application of viewing and animating humans in single photos in 3D, 2) a novel 2D warping method to deform a posable template body model to fit the person's complex silhouette to create an animatable mesh, and 3) a method for handling partial self occlusions. We compare to state-of-the-art related methods and evaluate results with human studies. Further, we present an interactive interface that allows re-posing the person in 3D, and an augmented reality setup where the animated 3D person can emerge from the photo into the real world. We demonstrate the method on photos, posters, and art.