Apple Inc.

Thomas Goossens

Laurent Baumann

Alexandre F Carlhian

Aymeric Bard

Michael Dale Lampell

Cedric Bray

Amaury Balliet

Marcel Van Os

Nicolas V Scapel

Julien Yann Robert

Guillaume P Barlier

Alexandre R Moha

Geoff Stahl

Fabrice Robinet

Aurelio Guzmán

Bertrand Serlet

Rudolph Van Der Merwe

Richard E Crandall

Alex Tremain Nelson

Hoan K Pham

Bruno M Sommer

Thomas Deniau

Justin D Stoyles

Thibaut Weise

Brian Amberg

Sebastien Metrot

Raphaël Mor

Nina Damasky

Raymond S Sepulveda

Justin N Wood

Lisa K Forssell

Jason D Rickwald

Steve S Ko

Alexandre Moha

Kevin Neal Armstrong

Cédric Bray

Adam M Cotugno

Guilherme Jacinto

A three-dimensional ('3D') avatar can be automatically created that resembles the physical appearance of an individual captured in one or more input images or video frames. The avatar can be further customized by the individual in an editing environment and used in various applications, including but not limited to gaming, social networking and video conferencing.

Automatic avatar creation

An avatar editing environment is disclosed that allows users to create custom avatars for use in online games and other applications. Starting with a blank face the user can add, rescale and position different elements (e.g., eyes, nose, mouth) on the blank face. The user can also change the shape of the avatar's face, the avatar's skin color and the color of all the elements. In some implementations, touch input and gestures can be used to manually edit the avatar. Various controls can be used to create the avatar, such as controls for resizing, rotating, positioning, etc. The user can choose between manual and automatic avatar creation. The avatar editing environment can be part of a framework that is available to applications. One or more elements of the avatar can be animated.

Avatar editing environment

The present disclosure generally relates to an avatar on a lock screen. A received user input causes a respective change in a respective element of the lock screen other than the avatar and an animation is displayed, over time, of the avatar transitioning through a plurality of poses.

Techniques for managing an avatar on a lock screen

Simulating a 3D audio environment, including receiving a visual representation of an object at a location in a scene, wherein the location represents a point in 3D space, receiving a sound element, and binding the sound element to the visual representation of the object such that a characteristic of the sound element is dynamically modified coincident with a change in location in the scene of the visual representation of the object in 3D space.

Automatic rendering of 3D sound

Various embodiments provide for techniques to facilitate online communication. In one embodiment, the communication is facilitated by providing a framework to enable the transmission of customized avatars across the messaging platform. The avatars may be recipe based, such that a receiving client device can receive the avatar recipe and render an avatar based on the recipe. In one embodiment the recipe includes set of components and a parameters associated with the set of components. An expression identifier associated with an expression to represent via the avatar can be received via the messaging platform and an animation of the avatar can be displayed to convey the intended expression.

Customized avatars and associated framework

Systems and methods for generating a video of an emoji that has been puppeted using inputs from image, depth, and audio. The inputs can capture facial expressions of a user, eye, eyebrow, mouth, and head movements. A pose, held by the user, can be detected that can be used to generate supplemental animation. The emoji can further be animated using physical properties associated with the emoji and captured movements. An emoji of a dog can have its ears move in response to an up-and-down movement, or a shaking of the head. The video can be sent in a message to one or more recipients. A sending device can render the puppeted video in accordance with hardware and software capabilities of a recipient's computer device.

Animated representation of facial expression

Systems, methods, and computer-readable media are provided for placing an asset on a three-dimensional model. Each asset can be associated with a pivot point and with an asset normal. A contact point on the surface of a model where an asset is to be positioned may be identified, and a surface normal that may be perpendicular to the surface at the contact point may also be identified. Then, the asset can be placed on the model such that the position of the pivot point of the asset may coincide with the position of the identified contact point on the surface of the model, and such that the orientation of the asset normal may match the orientation of the identified surface normal.

Systems, methods, and computer-readable media for placing an asset on a three-dimensional model

Various customization options are provided for customizing a 3D avatar of a head. Features of the head and assets corresponding to the features can be customized using blend shapes. An amount of storage for the plurality of blend shapes is minimized by determining overlapping blend shapes that can be reused for a plurality of different assets. Further, techniques are provided for dynamic changes to an avatar in accordance with selected features and assets.

Optimized avatar asset resource

Optimized avatar zones

Systems, methods, and computer readable media to improve the animation capabilities of a computer system are described. Animation targets may be represented as a combination of a current animation pose and an incremental morph. The incremental morph may be represented as a series of non-zero weights, where each weight alters one of a predetermined number of target poses. Each target pose may be represented as a weighted difference with respect to a reference pose. Target poses may be stored in memory in a unique and beneficial manner. The disclosed manner permits the efficient retrieval of pose vertex data at run-time and may be especially efficient in systems that do not use, or have very little, cache memory.

Animation techniques for mobile devices

Growing community of inventors

Paris, France

Thomas Goossens