Snap Inc.

Willi Menapace

Sergey Tulyakov

Menglei Chai

Hsin-Ying Lee

Aliaksandr Siarohin

Jian Ren

Kyle Olszewski

Ivan Skorokhodov

Chieh Lin

An environment synthesis framework generates virtual environments from a synthesized two-dimensional (2D) satellite map of a geographic area, a three-dimensional (3D) voxel environment, and a voxel-based neural rendering framework. In an example implementation, the synthesized 2D satellite map is generated by a map synthesis generative adversarial network (GAN) which is trained using sample city datasets. The multi-stage framework lifts the 2D map into a set of 3D octrees, generates an octree-based 3D voxel environment, and then converts it into a texturized 3D virtual environment using a neural rendering GAN and a set of pseudo ground truth images. The resulting 3D virtual environment is texturized, lifelike, editable, traversable in virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) experiences, and very large in scale.

Infinite-scale city synthesis

Unsupervised volumetric 3D animation (UVA) of non-rigid deformable objects without annotations learns the 3D structure and dynamics of objects solely from single-view red/green/blue (RGB) videos and decomposes the single-view RGB videos into semantically meaningful parts that can be tracked and animated. Using a 3D autodecoder framework, paired with a keypoint estimator via a differentiable perspective-n-point (PnP) algorithm, the UVA model learns the underlying object 3D geometry and parts decomposition in an entirely unsupervised manner from still or video images. This allows the UVA model to perform 3D segmentation, 3D keypoint estimation, novel view synthesis, and animation. The UVA model can obtain animatable 3D objects from a single or a few images. The UVA method also features a space in which all objects are represented in their canonical, animation-ready form. Applications include the creation of lenses from images or videos for social media applications.

Unsupervised volumetric animation

A framework trains game-engine-like neural models from annotated videos to generate a Learnable Game Engine (LGE) that maintains states of the scene, objects and agents in it, and enables rendering the environment from a controllable viewpoint. The LGE models the logic of the game and the rules of physics, making it possible for the user to play the game by specifying both high- and low-level action sequences. The LGE also unlocks a director's mode where the game is played by plotting behind the scenes, specifying high-level actions and goals for the agents using text-based instructions. To implement the director's mode, a trained diffusion-based animation model navigates the scene using high-level constraints, to enable play against an adversary, and to devise the strategy to win a point. To render the resulting state of the environment and its agents, a compositional neural radiance field (NeRF) representation is used in a synthesis model.

Plotting behind the scenes with learnable game engines

Growing community of inventors

Santa Monica, CA, United States of America

Willi Menapace