makehumancommunity.org

Research

My research is aimed at developing algorithms for the simulation of deformable solids with applications on human face and body animation, facial expression analysis and virtual surgery. Individual projects include:

� Visual speech synthesis using muscle-driven face models

� Robust quasistatic simulation algorithms for flesh simulation (with Joey Teran, Geoffrey Irving and Ron Fedkiw)


� Estimation of muscle activations in the human face from motion captured performances (with Igor Neverov and Ron Fedkiw)


� Simulation of anatomically accurate models of skeletal muscles (with Joey Teran, Cynthia Lau and Ron Fedkiw)

Another of Weta's innovations on "Avatar" was a new system for developing the way that muscles are produced for computer-generated characters. Letteri said that in the past, most visual effects studios would have crafted characters' skeletons and simply layered the digital muscles on top. But, he said, that's not how real muscles work. Instead, they have fibers that are firing up and down the body, and so for "Avatar," Weta "re-wrote our muscles to be correct biomechanically."