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Christian

Prof. Dr. Christian Theobalt

Head of research group Graphics, Vision & Video at MPII
Professor of Computer Science - Saarland University

Former affiliation: Visiting assistant professor, Stanford University

Our research group is also affiliated with the Max-Planck-Center for Visual Computing (MPI / Stanford)
I am also a member of the steering committee and a primary investigator at the Intel Visual Compting Institute, Saarbruecken.

I have open positions for PhD students and postdocs. I also offer bachelor and master theses.



Mailing Address: MPI Informatik
Campus E 1.4 - Office 228,
66123 Saarbruecken
Germany
Email: theobalt [at] mpii dot de
theobalt [at] cs dot stanford dot edu
Phone: +49 (0)681 9325-428
Fax: +49 (0)681 9325-499
URL: My Stanford Homepage (no longer updated)

Research Interests


  • Free-viewpoint and 3D Video
  • Marker-less Optical Motion Capture
  • 3D Image Analysis and Synthesis
  • Image-based Rendering
  • Virtual and Augmented Reality
  • Time-of-Flight Imaging
  • Dynamic Scene Reconstruction
  • 3D Computer Vision
  • Physically-based Rendering
  • Interaction
  • Machine Learning for Vision / Graphics

Spotlight


12/2011 Three papers accepted to EUROGRAPHICS 2012 - see below.
6/2011 Three papers accepted to ICCV 2011.
3/2011 Our paper on video-based characters will be presented at SIGGRAPH 2011.
2/2011 Two papers accepted at CVPR 2011 - one poster and one oral presentation. More info coming soon.
10/2010 NewScientist and several other media report about our method for reconstructing performances that can be easily edited - see project page
10/2010 NewScientist and several other media report about our MovieReshape project - see project page
7/2010 Two papers accepted to SIGGRAPH Asia 2010: Video-based Reconstruction of Animatable Human Characters and MovieReshape: Tracking and Reshaping of Humans in Videos
7/2010 New Book on Image and Geometry Processing for 3D Cinematography published by Springer. We contributed a chapter on Performance Capture from Multi-view Video.
6/2010 Our paper on joint scene flow, stereo, and camera calibration (collaborative work with MIA group at Saarland University) was accepted at ECCV 2010.
2/2010 two papers accepted at IEEE CVPR 2010.
5/2010 I am Program Chair (together with Bob Fisher) of 3DPVT 2010 in Paris.

Selected Projects (see also my publications page)




Gaurav Bharaj, Thorsten Thormählen, Hans-Peter Seidel, and Christian Theobalt
Automatically Rigging Multi-component Characters
to appear in Computer Graphics Forum (Proc. EUROGRAPHICS), 2012. (pdf) (video) (project page)
Miguel Granados, James Tompkin, Kwang In Kim, Oliver Grau, Jan Kautz, Christian Theobalt
How Not to Be Seen - Object Removal from Videos of Crowded Scenes
to appear in Computer Graphics Forum (Proc. EUROGRAPHICS), 2012. (pdf) (video)
Christian Richardt, Carsten Stoll, Neil Dogdgson; Hans-Peter Seidel, Christian Theobalt,
Coherent Spatiotemporal Filtering, Upsampling and Rendering of RGBZ Videos
to appear in Computer Graphics Forum (Proc. EUROGRAPHICS), 2012. (pdf) (video)
Carsten Stoll, Nils Hasler, Juergen Gall, Hans-Peter Seidel, Christian Theobalt,
Fast Articulated Motion Tracking using a Sums of Gaussians Body Model
IEEE International Conference on Computer Vision (ICCV), 2011, to appear. (pdf) (video)
Chenglei Wu, Kiran Varanasi, Yebin Liu, Hans-Peter Seidel, Christian Theobalt,
Shading-based Dynamic Shape Refinement from Multi-view Video under General Illumination,
IEEE International Conference on Computer Vision (ICCV), 2011, to appear.(PDF) (video)
Andreas Baak, Meinard Müller, Gaurav Bharaj, Hans-Peter Seidel, Christian Theobalt
A Data-Driven Approach for Real-Time Full Body Pose Reconstruction from a Depth Camera
IEEE International Conference on Computer Vision (ICCV), 2011, to appear. (pdf) (video) (project page)
Feng Xu, Yebin Liu, Carsten Stoll, James Tompkin, Gaurav Bharaj, Qionghai Dai,
Hans-Peter Seidel, Jan Kautz, Christian Theobalt
Video-based Characters - Creating New Human Performances from a Multi-view Video Database
to appear in ACM Transactions on Graphics (Proc. of SIGGRAPH 2011) (PDF) (video)
Yebin Liu, Carsten Stoll, Juergen Gall, Hans-Peter Seidel, Christian Theobalt,
Markerless Motion Capture of Interacting Characters Using Multi-view Image Segmentation
IEEE Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (CVPR),
p. 1249-1256, 2011 - oral presentation. [pdf] [video]
Chenglei Wu, Bennett Wilburn, Yasuyuki Matsushita, Christian Theobalt,
High-quality shape from multi-view stereo and shading under general illumination
IEEE Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (CVPR) 2011. [pdf]
Carsten Stoll, Juergen Gall, Edilson de Aguiar, Sebastian Thrun, Christian Theobalt,
Video-based Reconstruction of Animatable Human Characters
in ACM Transactions on Graphics (Proc. SIGGRAPH ASIA 2010), 2010.
(PDF) (video) (project page)
Arjun Jain, Thorsten Thormaehlen, Hans-Peter Seidel, Christian Theobalt,
MovieReshape: Tracking and Reshaping of Humans in Videos
to appear in ACM Transactions on Graphics (Proc. SIGGRAPH ASIA 2010), 2010.
(PDF) (video) (project page)
Levi Valgaerts, Andres Bruhn, Henning Zimmer, Joachim Weickert, Carsten Stoll, Christian Theobalt,
Joint Estimation of Motion, Structure and Geometry from Stereo Sequences
in Proc. of European Conference on Computer Vision (ECCV) 2010.
(PDF) (project page)
C. Linz, C. Lipski, L. Rogge, C. Theobalt, M. Magnor,
Space-Time Visual Effects as a Post-Production Process,
in Proc. ACM Workshop on 3D Video Processing, Firenze, Italy, October 2010. (paper)
Miguel Granados, Boris Ajdin, Michael Wand, Christian Theobalt, Hans-Peter Seidel, Hendrik P. A. Lensch,
Optimal HDR reconstruction with linear digital cameras,
In Proc. IEEE CVPR, 2010. (PDF)

Yan Cui, Sebastian Schuon, Derek Chan, Sebastian Thrun, Christian Theobalt
3D Shape Scanning with a Time-of-Flight Camera
In Proc. of CVPR 2010, (PDF) (Additional Material) (Video) (Data)

Sergey Levine, Christian Theobalt, Vladlen Koltun,
Real-Time Prosody-Driven Synthesis of Body Language.
Proc. of SIGGRAPH Asia 2009, Yokohama, Japan.(PDF) (video)

Young Min Kim, Christian Theobalt, James Diebel, Jana Kosecka, Branislav Micusik, and Sebastian Thrun,
Multi-view Image and ToF Sensor Fusion for Dense 3D Reconstruction.
In Proc. of 3DIM 2009, co-hosted with ICCV 2009. (PDF) (Project Page)
S. Srivastava, A. Saxena, C. Theobalt, S. Thrun, A. Y.~Ng,
i23 - Rapid Interactive 3D Reconstruction from a Single Image, Proc. VMV, 2009 (PDF)(Video)
S. Schuon, C. Theobalt, J. Davis, S. Thrun,
LidarBoost: Depth Superresolution for ToF 3D Shape Scanning.
In Proc. of IEEE CVPR 2009. (PDF) (Additional Material)
J. Gall, C. Stoll, E. de Aguiar Edilson, C. Theobalt, B. Rosenhahn, H.-P. Seidel.
Motion Capture using Joint Skeleton Tracking and Surface Estimation
Proc. IEEE Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition 2009 [pdf] [project]
Y.M. Kim, D. Chan, C. Theobalt, S. Thrun,
Design and Calibration of a Multi-view TOF Sensor Fusion System.
in Proc. IEEE CVPR Workshop on Time-of-flight Computer Vision 2008. (PDF)
D. Chan, H. Buisman, C. Theobalt, S. Thrun. A Noise-aware Filter for Real-time Depth Upsampling,
in Proc. of ECCV Workshop on Multi-camera and Multi-modal Sensor Fusion Algorithms and Applications, 2008. (PDF)
S. Schuon, C. Theobalt, J. Davis, S. Thrun,
High-quality Scanning using Time-of-Flight Depth Superresolution.
in IEEE CVPR Workshop on Time-Of-Flight Computer Vision 2008. (PDF)
E. de Aguiar, C. Stoll , C. Theobalt, N. Ahmed, H.-P. Seidel, S. Thrun,
Performance Capture from Sparse Multi-view Video,
in Proc. of SIGGRAPH 2008. [project page]
Data now available !
N. Ahmed, C. Theobalt, P. Dobrev, H.-P. Seidel, S. Thrun,
Robust Fusion of Dynamic Shape and Normal Capture for High-quality Reconstruction of Time-varying Geometry,
in Proc. of CVPR 2008. (PDF) (Video)
N. Ahmed, C. Theobalt, C. Roessl, S. Thrun, H.-P. Seidel,
Dense Correspondence Finding for Parametrization-free Animation Reconstruction from Video,
in Proc. of CVPR 2008. [Oral presentation - Acceptance Rate 3.95%] (PDF) (Video)
E. de Aguiar, C. Theobalt, S. Thrun, and H.-P. Seidel,
Automatic Conversion of Mesh Animations into Skeleton-based Animations.
In Proc. of EUROGRAPHICS 2008 (Computer Graphics Forum, vol. 27 issue 2), Crete, Greece.
[BibTeX] [project page]
M. Eisemann, B. de Decker, M. Magnor, P. Bekaert, E. de Aguiar, N. Ahmed, C. Theobalt and A. Sellent,
Floating Textures.
In Proc. of EUROGRAPHICS 2008 (Computer Graphics Forum, vol. 27 issue 2), Crete, Greece. (PDF) (Video)
Zhao Dong, Jan Kautz, Christian Theobalt, Hans-Peter Seidel.
Interactive Global Illumination Using Implicit Visibility,
Accepted by Pacific Graphics 2007 (oral paper),[PDF]
C. Theobalt, C. Roessl, E. de Aguiar, H.-P. Seidel,
Animation Collage,
Proc. ACM SIGGRAPH/EUROGRAPHICS Symposium on Computer Animation 2007, San Diego, USA. [project page]
N Ahmed, C. Theobalt, M. Magnor, H.-P. Seidel,
Spatio-Temporal Registration Techniques for Relightable 3D Video,
Proc. of IEEE ICIP, 2007 [project page]
I. Ihrke, G. Ziegler, A. Tevs, C. Theobalt, M. Magnor, H.-P. Seidel,
Eikonal Rendering - Efficient Light Transport in Refractive Objects.
ACM Transactions on Graphics (Proc. of ACM SIGGRAPH 2007), San Diego, USA. [project page]
M. Song, Z. Dong, C. Theobalt, H. Wang, Z. Liu, H.-P. Seidel,
A Generic Framework for Efficient 2D and 3D Facial Expression Analogy,
IEEE Transactions on Multimedia, 9(7), p.1384-1395, 2007. (Video) [Publisher's page] (preprint)
C. Stoll, E. de Aguiar, C. Theobalt and H.-P. Seidel,
A Volumetric Approach to Interactive Shape Editing.
Technical Report MPI-I-2007-4-004, MPII, 2007. [pdf] [avi]
E. de Aguiar, C. Theobalt, C. Stoll and H.-P. Seidel,
Marker-less Deformable Mesh Tracking for Human Shape and Motion Capture.
In Proc. of IEEE CVPR 2007, Minneapolis, USA.
[pdf] [BibTeX] [project page]
Rapid Animation of Laser-scanned Humans.

E.de Aguiar, C. Theobalt, C. Stoll, H.-P. Seidel,
Rapid Animation of Laser-scanned Humans,
to apper in Proc. of IEEE Virtual Reality 2007, Charlotte, USA.[paper]
Spatio-temporal Reflectance Sharing for Relightable 3D Video.

N. Ahmed, C. Theobalt, H.-P. Seidel,
Spatio-temporal Reflectance Sharing for Relighatble 3D Video,
Proc. of MIRAGE, Paris, 2007.[paper] [project page]
The Relightable Free-Viewpoint Video Project. [project page]
GPU-based Realtime Quadtree/Octree Analysis

G. Ziegler, R. Dimitrov, C. Theobalt, H.-P.Seidel,
Real-time Quadtree Analysis using HistoPyramids,
in Proc. of IS&T/SPIE Symposium on Electronic Imaging, 2007, San Jose, CA.[paper][videos]

GPU-based Data Compaction using HistoPyramids

G. Ziegler, A. Tevs, C. Theobalt, H.-P. Seidel,
GPU Point List Generation Through Histogram Pyramids,
in Proc. of VMV'06, p. 137--141, Aachen, Germany, 2006. [paper][videos]

Automatic Learning of Articulated Skeletons from 3D Marker Trajectories. [project page]
Confluent Motion - A Simple Method for Animating Scanned Geometry. [project page]
Tracking High-speed Motion with Multi-exposure Images. [project page]
Free-Viewpoint Video of Human Actors. [project page]
Enhancing Human Motion Capture with 3D Motion Fields. [project page]
Automatic Generation of Human Avatars. [project page]
Reconstructing Human Shape and Motion. [project page]
Automatic Marker-less Reconstruction of Kinematic Skeletons. [project page]
Marker-free Human Motion Capture. [project page]
Volumetric Reconstruction of Dynamic Scenes. [project page]
The secret projects - there are always secret projects :-)