Darragh Higgins

Title: VRFaces: Next-generation performance capture for digital humans in immersive VR

Supervision Team: Rachel McDonnell, TCD / Benjamin R. Cowan, UCD

Description: It is expected that immersive conferencing in virtual reality will replace audio and video in the future. By using embodied avatars in VR to act as digital representations of meeting participants, this could revolutionize the way business is conducted in the future, allowing for much richer experiences incorporating the interpersonal communication that occurs through body language and social cues. However, creating virtual replicas of human beings is still one of the greatest challenges in the field of Computer Graphics. The aim of this project is to advance the animation technology considerably to allow a user to truly “become” their virtual character, feeling ownership of their virtual face, with near cinema quality facial animation.