Parametric 3D modeling of a symmetric human body

Abstract To realistically represent 3D human body shape in a mathematical way, the parametric model used should incorporate symmetry as displayed by real people. This paper proposes a symmetric parametric model called symmetricSCAPE. It successfully incorporates symmetry into a parametric model of the 3D body, formulating body geometric variations of both shape and pose using a triangular mesh representation. The symmetry constraint is imposed on each symmetrically-related triangle pair of the body mesh. Mathematically, symmetry-related constraint matrices are derived, and applied during shape and pose deformation of triangle pairs. By accurately registering a pre-designed symmetrization template mesh to the training dataset, we learn how the symmetricSCAPE model causes the body mesh to deform relative to the symmetry. Our experiments demonstrate that the symmetricSCAPE model results in a better, more parsimonious, and more accurate parametric model of the 3D human body than traditional non-symmetry-aware representations.