[HN Gopher] Gaussian Head Avatar: Ultra High-Fidelity Head Avata...
___________________________________________________________________
Gaussian Head Avatar: Ultra High-Fidelity Head Avatar via Dynamic
Gaussians
Author : phil9l
Score : 150 points
Date : 2023-12-08 09:38 UTC (13 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (yuelangx.github.io)
(TXT) w3m dump (yuelangx.github.io)
| cubefox wrote:
| "represented by controllable 3D Gaussians"
|
| They just assume everyone knows what they mean with "3D
| Gaussian".
| drsopp wrote:
| No, they assume their peers do.
| vmfunction wrote:
| It is academia ;-)
| GaggiX wrote:
| I don't think a research paper is meant to be understood by
| everyone, and I imagine the authors don't have that expectation
| either.
| data-ottawa wrote:
| I actually have the same gripe, unfortunately there is a long
| history of academic fields naming things like this (there's an
| entire Wikipedia page on this banned after Gauss/"Gaussian" htt
| ps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_things_named_after_Car...)
| blovescoffee wrote:
| Not really. There are many things named after Gauss but a
| "Gaussian" is almost always meant to be a probability
| distribution / density function that is very well understood
| and defined (and common)
| eigenvalue wrote:
| Take a linear algebra course or read a textbook before trying
| to read and understand cutting edge ML research!
| cubefox wrote:
| Rude!
| ndriscoll wrote:
| Seems like they just mean the vector version of a Gaussian
| function: f(r) = exp(-r*r). Basically a "bell curve" except in
| 3D so it's a ball that's dense at the center and dies off. Then
| the optimizer might learn to produce an intensity, offset, and
| width for each point in a cloud, so the A,B,C for A*f((r-B)/C)
| at each point or something.
| blovescoffee wrote:
| This is in fact what the optimizer does. At least in the
| original paper, the model learns to skew and rotate the
| gaussians.
| PTOB wrote:
| And now: - the 4-hr Work Week toolkit is complete. - deep-fakes
| are now just regular fakes
| cloudking wrote:
| When can we send our gaussian heads to the Zoom meeting?
| randall wrote:
| I didn't expect Gaussian splats to be so good at approximating
| geometry. It's cool when you see a new foundational approach to
| something that's been done a certain way for decades.
| eurekin wrote:
| Someone mentioned previously that guassian splats are ideal
| extension of Ai image generation into 3d and they might have
| turned out correct
| kridsdale1 wrote:
| They're basically voxels after we abandon Cartesian
| 3-dimensionality (which imposes cubes)
| porphyra wrote:
| More like point clouds since they are not constrained to a
| grid.
|
| NERF is more like voxels though.
| blovescoffee wrote:
| What do you mean NERF is like voxels? It is very much NOT
| like voxels
| blovescoffee wrote:
| Most of the time they aren't that good at approximating
| geometry. They are good at approximating the "appearance" of
| geometry. However, many regularization techniques and priors
| can be introduced to make the Gaussian splatting technique
| better at geometry approximation.
| kthejoker2 wrote:
| Stills look great, fidelity is there ...
|
| The actual rotating avatar videos still have extremely poor
| approximations of human musculature especially at the eyes and
| jaw (bc these are hollow surface meshes naturally)
|
| Is there research to overlay these models on more representative
| facial muscles?
| heliophobicdude wrote:
| This is excellent! A similar paper from Meta was published two
| days ago on Avatars too
|
| https://shunsukesaito.github.io/rgca/
|
| Here's the discussion for it(empty as of right now):
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38554537
| lelag wrote:
| There was also this project that was posted a couple days ago:
| https://blog.metaphysic.ai/controllable-deepfakes-with-gauss...
|
| Why they call a virtual avatar a deepfake beats me though....
| peterleiser wrote:
| If you can "wear" the face of someone else then that seems
| like deepfake territory.
| yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
| > Why they call a virtual avatar a deepfake beats me
| though....
|
| What's the difference? In both cases you're simulating
| somebody's face in a way that doesn't actually require having
| the original to drive it.
| ChuckMcM wrote:
| It is, I fully expect at some point we'll get "in game" MMORPG
| player characters that are emotively very very effective. The
| immersion level will be pretty intense at that point,
| especially if it's VR but even a 3rd person view type like WoW
| using a web cam to process your facial expression?
|
| Another interesting application would be "zoom" meetings where
| everyone is shown around the table or in the audience and it
| processes their emotive state in real time. That could help
| speakers engage with the audience in a better way.
|
| Of course the "bad" uses of this tech are pretty out there too,
| from porn apps, to ripping people off by getting a "zoom" from
| a relative.
| godelski wrote:
| > Another interesting application would be "zoom" meetings
| where everyone is shown around the table or in the audience
| and it processes their emotive state in real time. That could
| help speakers engage with the audience in a better way.
|
| See Permutation City[0]. Another application is actually
| masking reactions selectively. There's some interesting
| aspects that play out with respect to this and some other
| interesting aspects tech that people will now view as near
| Sci-Fi. The VR identity cloning is a common Sci-Fi plot, not
| specifically a Permutation City thing. Great book, highly
| recommend.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permutation_City
| muglug wrote:
| I think the tech in that paper was demoed for this podcast:
| https://youtu.be/MVYrJJNdrEg
|
| The big roadblock to commercialisation for the moment is the
| original capture -- for the paper they used a 110-camera
| capture rig under ideal lighting conditions.
|
| In the above podcast Zuckerberg mentions that in the future
| people will be able to use their phones to do that same
| capture, but I don't think that tech is coming next year.
|
| I wonder if there'll be an interim period where people who want
| high-quality avatars will have to book an appointment.
| croes wrote:
| We will get a whole new level of fake news.
|
| Online meetings for important things are now unsecure because you
| can't be sure the other people are who they claim to be.
| nuz wrote:
| People can lie, people can send emails that look like they're
| from your boss. People now know deepfakes are a thing and have
| an immunity from trusting suspicious online meetings where your
| boss acts different than they usually do. Etc etc. It's not as
| big of a threat as people want to make it out to be
| DeIlliad wrote:
| People routinely fall for lies and get phished from those
| emails that look like they're from your boss. Every year
| there are a handful of high profile tech companies that get
| hacked because someone you would think should know better
| falls for a phishing scam. I think this is a bigger threat
| than people are making it out to be.
| croes wrote:
| We will get "recordings" were people will plot the great
| reset.
|
| We already got fake audio of news anchors apologizing for
| years of lies.
|
| We will get a lot more of that.
| jayd16 wrote:
| Security for a video call is from the user account not visual
| verification.
| croes wrote:
| Should be but people can easily be fooled.
| sbarre wrote:
| People get their company accounts compromised all the time.
|
| It's one thing to get a poorly-worded email from your CFO
| asking for company bank info, but it's a whole other thing to
| be asked over a Zoom video call by who you think is the right
| person, but it's a fake gaussian splat avatar.
|
| There's already precedent for scammers doing similar things
| using voice deepfaking over phone calls. This could be a
| whole new level of phishing.
| Philpax wrote:
| Excited for the next generation of Personas for the Vision Pro,
| etc :-)
| gigel82 wrote:
| Why would they even include a "Code" link if it's just an empty
| GitHub repo with a README?
| blovescoffee wrote:
| It will get updated. This is pretty common in research papers.
| They're just getting the link attached because it's easier to
| update the repo than the paper.
| planckscnst wrote:
| The rotating avatars have some uncannyness to them due to the eye
| gaze not fixating on a target as it moves around. I think slowly
| rotating the camera around the model would have done better.
| Perhaps also some background elements so it's clear that the
| avatar isn't moving, the camera is.
|
| I'm hoping this technique can be used in video games because it's
| significantly better than what we have now.
| WhereIsTheTruth wrote:
| How can we trust photos now? Fiction or reality, it's becoming
| harder to differentiate
| gsuuon wrote:
| I think that point has come and gone. Not sure how society will
| adapt - I really hope smart people are out there working on
| this sort of stuff.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2023-12-08 23:00 UTC)