We propose a new 3D model of the human body that is both realistic and part-based. The body is represented by
a graphical model in which nodes of the graph correspond to body parts that can independently translate and rotate
in 3D as well as deform to capture pose-dependent shape variations. Pairwise potentials define a “stitching cost” for
pulling the limbs apart, giving rise to the stitched puppet model (SPM). Unlike existing realistic 3D body models, the
distributed representation facilitates inference by allowing the model to more effectively explore the space of poses,
much like existing 2D pictorial structures models. We infer pose and body shape using a form of particle-based max-product belief propagation. This gives the SPM the realism of recent 3D body models with the computational advantages
of part-based models. We apply the SPM to two challenging problems involving estimating human shape and
pose from 3D data. The first is the FAUST mesh alignment challenge (http://faust.is.tue.mpg.de/), where ours is the first method to successfully align all 3D meshes. The second involves estimating pose and shape from crude visual hull representations of complex
body movements.
In applications of graphical models arising in domains such as computer vision and signal processing,
we often seek the most likely configurations of high-dimensional, continuous variables. We develop a particle-based max-product algorithm which maintains a diverse set of posterior mode hypotheses, and is robust to initialization.
At each iteration, the set of hypotheses at each node is augmented via stochastic proposals, and then reduced via an efficient selection algorithm. The integer program underlying our optimization-based particle selection minimizes
errors in subsequent max-product message updates. This objective automatically encourages diversity in the maintained hypotheses, without requiring tuning of application-specific distances among hypotheses. By avoiding the stochastic resampling steps underlying particle sum-product algorithms, we also avoid common degeneracies where particles collapse onto a single hypothesis. Our approach significantly outperforms previous particle-based algorithms in experiments focusing on the estimation of human pose from single images.
Pictorial Structures (PS) define a probabilistic model of 2D articulated objects in images. Typical PS models assume an object can be represented by a set of rigid parts connected with pairwise constraints that define the prior probability of part configurations. These models are widely used to represent non-rigid articulated objects such as humans and animals despite the fact that such objects have parts that deform non-rigidly. Here we define a new Deformable Structures (DS) model that is a natural extension of previous PS models and that captures the non-rigid shape deformation of the parts. Each part in a DS model is represented by a low-dimensional shape deformation space and pairwise potentials between parts capture how the shape varies with pose and the shape of neighboring parts. A key advantage of such a model is that it more accurately models object boundaries. This enables image likelihood models that are more discriminative than previous PS likelihoods. This likelihood is learned using training imagery annotated using a DS “puppet.” We focus on a human DS model learned from 2D projections of a realistic 3D human body model and use it to infer human poses in images using a form of non-parametric belief propagation.
We develop a method for discovering the parts of an articulated object from aligned meshes of the object in various three-dimensional poses. We adapt the distance dependent Chinese restaurant process (ddCRP) to allow nonparametric discovery of a potentially unbounded number of parts, while simultaneously guaranteeing a spatially connected segmentation. To allow analysis of datasets in which object instances have varying 3D shapes, we model part variability across poses via affine transformations. By placing a matrix normal-inverse-Wishart prior on these affine transformations, we develop a ddCRP Gibbs sampler which tractably marginalizes over transformation uncertainty. Analyzing a dataset of humans captured in dozens of poses, we infer parts which provide quantitatively better deformation predictions than conventional clustering methods.
We formulate the problem of 3D human pose estimation and tracking as one of inference in a graphical model. Unlike traditional kinematic tree representations, our model of the body is a collection of loosely-connected body-parts. In particular, we model the body using an undirected graphical model in which nodes correspond to parts and edges to kinematic, penetration, and temporal constraints imposed by the joints and the world. These constraints are encoded using pair-wise statistical distributions, that are learned from motion-capture training data. Human pose and motion estimation is formulated as inference in this graphical model and is solved using Particle Message Passing (PaMPas). PaMPas is a form of non-parametric belief propagation that uses a variation of particle filtering that can be applied over a general graphical model with loops. The loose-limbed model and decentralized graph structure allow us to incorporate information from "bottom-up" visual cues, such as limb and head detectors, into the inference process. These detectors enable automatic initialization and aid recovery from transient tracking failures. We illustrate the method by automatically tracking people in multi-view imagery using a set of calibrated cameras and present quantitative evaluation using the HumanEva dataset.
