Inverse rendering of faces with a 3D morphable model

In this paper, we present a complete framework to inverse render faces with a 3D Morphable Model (3DMM). By decomposing the image formation process into geometric and photometric parts, we are able to state the problem as a multilinear system which can be solved accurately and efficiently. As we treat each contribution as independent, the objective function is convex in the parameters and a global solution is guaranteed. We start by recovering 3D shape using a novel algorithm which incorporates generalization error of the model obtained from empirical measurements. We then describe two methods to recover facial texture, diffuse lighting, specular reflectance, and camera properties from a single image. The methods make increasingly weak assumptions and can be solved in a linear fashion. We evaluate our findings on a publicly available database, where we are able to outperform an existing state-of-the-art algorithm. We demonstrate the usability of the recovered parameters in a recognition experiment conducted on the CMU-PIE database.