1. Field
The present disclosure relates to a three-dimensional montage generation system and method.
2. Description of the Related Art
A montage is made for helping an arrest of a criminal. Such a montage is directly sketched by hands based on a specialist and eyewitness evidence or made by combining most similar parts (namely, a facial shape, the eyes, the nose, the lips or the like) of a suspect with a computer program.
If a montage is used, a criminal may be arrested faster, which may comfort the victim and prevent additional harm. In addition, distributed montages may shrink the suspect confidence. Therefore, making and distributing montages plays an important role in the public order and security. However, the montage made as described above shows a front face and does not give figures of a suspect from various view points. For example, a feature such as a wound at the side face, which cannot be easily expressed on the front face, is generally supplemented as a written comment. Further, since a witness frequently sees a criminal just in a very short time due to the urgent situation, the front face of the criminal may not be watched in many cases. In order to make an accurate montage, a three-dimensional montage model of a suspect which may be seen from various view points is required, rather than a simple two-dimensional montage. More accurate montage will help a faster arrest of the criminal.
Various kinds of existing montage software also provide three-dimensional faces, but within a limited angle, and such three-dimensional faces are not natural since they are made by means of a simple warping technology. Along with the development of technology, there have been introduced schemes for obtaining a relatively natural three-dimensional personal model by approximating a front picture and a side picture. However, such schemes apply an optimization algorithm by mapping two-dimensional data with three-dimensional data and approximating facial looks to decrease errors. The optimization algorithm generally consumes two or three hours, which may be not so useful for actual software.
By virtue of rapid development of computer graphics technologies in 1990s, the three-dimensional face modeling technique is presently broadly used in movie industries or for animations, games or the like. Since face modeling for games or animations is just creating a virtual character or making an avatar similar to an own figure, personal tastes or preferences such as outward satisfaction or familiarity give the most influence on the model, rather than accuracy or reliability of the model. In this case, for the selection of a user, a data provider should possess various model data, which however consumes much time and cost since animators should give careful manual endeavors by using advanced tools.
Different from the above, accuracy and reality are demanded in montage modeling for arresting a criminal. The term ‘accuracy and reality’ used herein does not mean how a two-dimensional montage made based on eyewitness evidence is similar to an actual face of a criminal but means similarity between the prepared montage and a generated three-dimensional model.
Korean Unexamined Patent Publication No. 10-2004-0009460 discloses the most public method for combining and composing a montage by selecting parts most similar to a suspect. In particular, since each facial part is possessed not as a simple two-dimensional partial picture but as a three-dimensional data format, a montage is composed on a three-dimensional area. This method stores data in a range data format in consideration of a size of the three-dimensional DB. The three-dimensional DB is searched by using feature information of a two-dimensional image, and a composing location is determined by projecting three-dimensional partial DB data to coordinates of a two-dimensional facial part, which however does not ensure high degree of completion of the three-dimensional model.
Korean Unexamined Patent Publication No. 10-2001-0084670 obtains a three-dimensional personal model only from two-dimensional photograph data. However, since the height of the nose and the protrusion of the lips of a model may not be easily expressed by using only a single photograph showing a front face, a photograph showing a side face is additionally used to obtain a personalized model.
Korean Unexamined Patent Publication No. 10-2003-0086063 illustrates a method of making a three-dimensional caricature model from a general two-dimensional photograph. A template three-dimensional model to be transformed is present, and, after the template three-dimensional model is projected two-dimensionally, the projected model is mapped with feature points of the two-dimensional photograph to obtain a transformation matrix so that mapping errors are repeatedly reduced.
However, such conventional techniques need a side face photograph as well as a two-dimensional front face photograph and are not able to generate a three-dimensional model where depth information of each facial part is reflected.