Rapid 3D face modeling using a frontal face and a profile face for accurate 2D pose synthesis

This paper proposes an efficient way of modeling 3D faces by using only two - a frontal and a profile - images. Although it is desirable to utilize only one single image for 3D face modeling, more accurate depth information can be obtained if we use a profile face image additionally. Despite this seemly straightforward task, however, no standard solutions for 3D face modeling with two images have yet been reported. To tackle this problem, in our work, we first extract facial shape information from each image and then align these two shapes in order to obtain a sparse 3D face. Then, the observed sparse 3D face is combined into generic dense depth information. By doing so, we reflect both the observed 3D sparse depth information and smooth depth changes around facial areas in our reconstructed 3D shape. Finally, the intensity of the frontal image is texture-mapped onto the reconstructed 3D shape for realistic 3D modeling. Unlike other 3D modeling methods, our proposed work is extremely fast (within a few seconds) and does not require any complex hardware settings or calibration. We illustrate our 3D modeling results by using the MPIE-database and demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed approach.