Marker-Less 3D Feature Tracking for Mesh-Based Human Motion Capture

We present a novel algorithm that robustly tracks 3D trajectories of features on a moving human who has been recorded with multiple video cameras. Our method does so without special markers in the scene and can be used to track subjects wearing everyday apparel. By using the paths of the 3D points as constraints in a fast mesh deformation approach, we can directly animate a static human body scan such that it performs the same motion as the captured subject. Our method can therefore be used to directly animate high quality geometry models from unaltered video data which opens the door to new applications in motion capture, 3D Video and computer animation. Since our method does not require a kinematic skeleton and only employs a handful of feature trajectories to generate lifelike animations with realistic surface deformations, it can also be used to track subjects wearing wide apparel, and even animals. We demonstrate the performance of our approach using several captured real-world sequences, and also validate its accuracy.