The CAMERA (Centre for the Analysis of Motion, Entertainment Research and Applications) project, part of the University of Bath, is offering something a little different to prospective to PhD candidates – a fully-funded PhD to investigate Video Dressing Virtual Actors.
Motion Capture and VR are undergoing a boom in research at the moment as the UK strives to become a world leader in these new fields.
Opportunities like this showcase how British institutions are leading the charge on new Motion Capture technologies and techniques.
This new PhD would aim to tackle a major problem with the existing technology – dressing is still a major problem for any virtual actors in films, games, and VR.
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Existing methods are based on physical simulations of a material.
Parameters have to be set just right so that linen behaves as linen, or leather as leather.
Visuals for different materials have to be painstakingly modelled so that velvet will look like velvet and silk appear as silk.
CAMERA want to take a new approach to making models of cloth and clothing and are aiming to create new technologies to allow an artist to film the material they want to use then extract that information from the video in a way that makes it easy for the artist to use to clothing.
The team hope that new technology like this would mean that “instead of worrying about details such as the elasticity of cotton, the artist would be free to concentrate on what really matters to them – costume design“.
Fantastic opportunity to join CAMERA studying for a fully-funded PhD investigating Video Dressing Virtual Actors https://t.co/Q0fV1Q7Fmf
— CAMERA (@CAMERA_Bath) January 25, 2017
A successful candidate would have their PhD fully-funded and would work under Professor Peter Hall. If you have a background in Computer Science, Motion Capture technologies and are interested you can apply below.
CAMERA received a £5 million grant to enable a state of the art motion capture studio to be installed at Bath.
The centre works with the Centre for Digital Entrainment and the OAK project in Bath. The CDE itself aims to place students directly into the creative sector of films, games, and broadcast.
You can find out more about the techniques mentioned in the paper “Woven Fabric Model Creation from a Single Image“
