Parametric modeling of 3D human body shape? A survey

Parametric modeling of 3D body shape is widely used to create realistic human bodies. It furthermore permits robust reconstruction of complete 3D body shapes even from incomplete capture data—traditional scanning techniques result in gaps and missing regions due to occlusion and inaccessibility of certain areas of the body. Numerous methods of parametric modeling have been proposed for a wide variety of 3D body processing tasks. They provide the ability to represent a range of identity-dependent body shapes, and to deform them naturally into various poses. This report surveys and classifies recent developments in parametric 3D body shape modeling. We focus on elucidating the key similarities and differences between existing methods as an aid to understanding their relationships. We also discuss a variety of 3D body shape processing applications that benefit from parametric modeling. Our analysis of the strengths and limitations of existing algorithms also lets us highlight opportunities for future research