TRACKING MOTION AND INTENSITY VARIATIONS USING HIERARCHICAL 2-D MESH MODELING FOR SYNTHETIC OBJECT TRANSFIGURATION

We propose a method for tracking the motion and intensity variations o f a 2-D mildly deformable image object using a hierarchical 2-D mesh m odel. The proposed method is applied to synthetic object transfigurati on, namely, replacing an object in a real video clip with another synt hetic or natural object via digital postprocessing. Successful transfi guration requires accurate tracking of both motion and intensity (cont rast and brightness) variations of the object-to-be-replaced so that t he replacement object can be rendered in exactly the same way from a s ingle still picture. The proposed method is capable of tracking image regions corresponding to scene objects with nonplanar and/or mildly de forming surfaces, accounting for intensity variations, and is shown to be effective with real image sequences. (C) 1996 Academic Press, Inc.