One of my favorite papers of this year has been HumanRF and its accompanying dataset, Actors. As you might be getting tired of hearing, I love seeing photorealistic humans in 3D. It probably won’t surprise you then that today’s article takes a look a the company that created the Actors dataset for Sythensia, Infinite Realities.
I have written this article a few times now, constantly revising and adding more, because they keep just putting out amazing things. Infinite Realities is a 3D Scanning Studio based out of Ipswich, specializing in creating digital humans.
With that in mind, Infinite Realities have taken a liking to both NeRFs and 3D Gaussian Splatting. And for good reason. The amount of potential use cases for humans is massive.
https://twitter.com/8Infinite8/status/1657440542072995841
No your eyes do not deceive you. These are NeRFs that are playing at 30fps, showcasing dynamic motion and interactions of people. This showcases the ability of several industries to leverage NeRFs. Let’s take a look at some of them.
Sports and Sports Recovery
My mind first goes to the sports and sports recovery industry. Imagine having these interactive views of players. It feels significantly more immersive than the standard photo of a player or imagine digital sports cards. It feels like something that Topps should be pursuing.
While Golf swing analytics have come a long way in development, I also believe that they can be stepped up utilizing NeRFs to generate full 360 views of swings. Try expanding this to most sports and I believe it would be successful.
https://twitter.com/8Infinite8/status/1688557686047059968
Separately, imagine the physical therapy, recovery, and fitness applications of this. People will be able to generate full courses in photorealistic 3D. This will help ensure proper form across stretching, exercise, and weightlifting, something I personally struggle with. Further, I do not see how this is not a better solution than watching a static video from one angle. I would be curious to see how digital first training companies such as Centr or SWEAT will utilize these, but believe it will result in libraries of three dimensional content.
Healthcare and NeRFs
Dipping into the sports recovery potential applications, barely touches into healthcare and healthcare education. By allowing these representations to exist, medical students can examine and learn from individual case studies in photorealistic three dimensions through Infinite Realities. As gross as it may sound, having a photorealistic three dimensional library of maladies and surgeries will help give students access to potentially lifesaving data and experiences.
While I’m not fully advocating for surgeries to be performed inside of a camera rig, given how much of medical education is observation based, I view the possibilities here as a way to supplement medical education.
Additionally, utilizing VR will allow working professionals to see the case up close. By being able to provide photorealistic data, doctors will be able to make more targeted diagnoses on specialized cases and get second opinions faster.
https://twitter.com/8Infinite8/status/1688563243126599680
I believe that we will see native plugins into EHRs across medical systems that allow for the asynchronous view, documentation, and inspection of cases. This will inherently create better communication pipelines between medical professionals and allow for doctors who are not geographically in the same location to view specialized cases.
NeRFs and the Haircare Industry
I’ve seen a lot of mindblowing papers this year, including this one that allows for visualization of hair. Notoriously thin and tough to represent, this marks a massive opportunity for salons, consumers, and marketers to leverage the power of NeRFs with the haircare industry. By being able to quickly model and photorealistically represent hair, people can make better choices about how they want to appear.
https://twitter.com/8Infinite8/status/1688566944855662592
Collecting Applications of NeRFs
One of my biggest gripes with reselling platforms such as eBay or StockX, is that it’s very difficult to get a decent understanding of what an item’s actual condition is. While some of the photos might give a sense, you never know the exact condition until you unbox it. By creating a photorealistic representation of the item, I imagine that damage claims would plummet, as users have access to the actual views of the item. If this is starting to feel like something out of Star Wars, it might be because Star Wars actually used Infinite Realities in the new movies.
https://twitter.com/8Infinite8/status/1695077303896699301
3D Gaussian Splatting
All of this so far has barely touched on their explorations with 3D Gaussian Splatting!
https://twitter.com/henrypearce4D/status/1679512427463864320https://twitter.com/8Infinite8/status/1699460316529090568
As more of the world begins to embrace NeRFs and radiance fields, I believe that we will continue to see Infinite Realities be at the very forefront of innovation and application. I would not be surprised if a larger company decided to acquire the Suffolk based team. The possibilities are truly nearly limitless.
For those like me that are extremely excited to try, you might have to be a little patient. This was produced on a custom iteration of Instant NGP and while I very much want to try it, there has not been any information yet if this will be made available to the public. However, Infinite Realities has told me that they would like to share these custom reference tools in the future for 2d and 3d artists, specifically around human anatomy study.
New to Gaussian Splatting? Start here
