Assistant Professor David Lindell and Professor Kyros Kutulakos will lead a research collaboration with video game publisher Ubisoft
University of Toronto computer science professors David Lindell and Kyros Kutulakos 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 Ubisoft La Forge, the project will “aim to transform the field of 4D digital human capture and rendering using an emerging artificial intelligence technique known as ‘implicit representations,’” 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-André Carbonneau.
“This partnership represents an exciting opportunity to push the boundaries of how we reconstruct and render digital humans—our work will push the realism of character movement, facial expressions, and emotional nuances beyond current capabilities,” said Lindell. “We look forward to collaborating with Ubisoft La Forge on groundbreaking research.”
Together, the researchers will investigate real-time applications, including video games, virtual reality and film production.