Assistant Professor David Lindell and Professor Kyros Kutulakos will lead a research collaboration with video game publisher Ubisoft
University of Toronto computer science professors and have been tapped by video game publisher Ubisoft to collaborate on a new AI research project to transform digital avatars.
Through its research and development group , the project will 鈥渁im to transform the field of 4D digital human capture and rendering using an emerging artificial intelligence technique known as 鈥榠mplicit representations,鈥欌 the company announced on its website.
Ubisoft notes this has the potential to improve the level of immersion players feel when playing video games, while developers may benefit from reducing tedious workloads, so they can focus on other aspects of digital avatars, like movement, design and more.
This collaboration will be led by Lindell and Kutulakos; York University Professor Kosta Derpanis, a University of Toronto CS alumnus (HBSc 1999); and Ubisoft La Forge Principal Research Scientist Marc-Andr茅 Carbonneau.
鈥淭his partnership represents an exciting opportunity to push the boundaries of how we reconstruct and render digital humans鈥攐ur work will push the realism of character movement, facial expressions, and emotional nuances beyond current capabilities,鈥 said Lindell. 鈥淲e look forward to collaborating with Ubisoft La Forge on groundbreaking research.鈥
Together, the researchers will investigate real-time applications, including video games, virtual reality and film production.