A German coder has produced a program that can easily remove unwanted pounds from anyone appearing in videos.
In the past, adding weight or changing a body’s build in video needed intensive frame by frame alterations by a team of dedicated CG artists. But now, a new tool can do that task quickly and cheaply by automating some of the process. The team led by Christian Theobalt of the Max Planck Institute for Informatics in Saarbrücken, Germany, accomplished this by taking 3D scans of 120 different body types of both men and women. This gave them a library of shapes to impose over a moving image, which can quickly be altered after the actor’s silhouette is traced with other consumer grade software.
The practical upshots of tech like this are numerous. First off, an actor wouldn’t have to physically lose or gain weight like Christian Bale did in The Machinist or Robert de Niro famously did for Raging Bull.
“The actor wouldn’t need to go to all that trouble,” Theobalt said.
Also, ads wouldn’t need to be shot differently to appeal to different cultures by using skinnier or fatter spokespeople. They could just shoot one and make the changes cheaply and easily with this software.
The program doesn’t yet have a catchy Web 2.0 name yet but I’m sure it’s just a matter of time. NoFats? Skinjob? No I got it: SlimFast!
What? That’s taken? Sheesh, well, what’s your bright idea then?
Source: New Scientist
