Event Location: NSH 1305
Bio: Chris Bregler is a Professor of Computer Science at NYU and is also working with Lucasfilm’s Advanced Development Group and with Industrial Light & Magic on new vision based tracking systems. Prior to NYU he was on the faculty at Stanford University and worked for several companies including Hewlett Packard, Interval, and Disney Feature Animation. Besides his ILM work,his projects helped doctors analyze movement disorders; detecting terrorists in surveillance videos; and producing the world’s largest real-time motion capture game, Squidball.net. He was the chair for the SIGGRAPH Electronic Theater and Animation Festival in 2004. He has been named Stanford Joyce Faculty Fellow, Terman Fellow, and Sloan Research Fellow. He received the Olympus Prize for achievements in computer vision and pattern recognition and was awarded IEEE Longuet-Higgins Prize for “Fundamental Contributions in Computer Vision that have withstood the test of time.”

Abstract: Mermaids and pirates, the Hulk and Iron Man! This talk will describe the behind-the-scenes technology of our match-moving and 3D capture system used in recent movies, including The Avengers, Pirates of the Caribbean, and Battleship, as well as new sub-pixel tracking of entire natural environments in Avatar, Star Trek, & The Lone Ranger to create the latest 3D visual effects.It will also show how similar technology has been used by us for New York Times infographics to demonstrate the body language of presidential debates, the motions of a New York Philharmonics conductor, New York Yankee Mariano Rivera’s pitch style, and Olympic swimmer Dana Vollmer’s famous butterfly stroke that won her four gold medals.

While Motion Capture is the predominant technology used for these domains, we have moved beyond such studio-based technology to do special effects without markers and without multiple high-speed IR cameras. Instead, many projects are shot on-site, outdoors, and in challenging environments with the benefit of new interactive computer vision techniques.