Artificial Intelligence for Virtual Characters in Computer Graphics and Computer Animation

Driving by the heavy demands from the games and animation industry, smart virtual characters underpinned by deep learning based artificial intelligence have received significant focus. This project focuses on deep-learning based artificial intelligence algorithms to synthesise realistic movements, shapes and behaviours for virtual characters.

There is a wide range of projects within this scope. Some examples include:

• Deep learning methods for controllable 3D human motion synthesis.
• Virtual reality informed by human motion and hand gestures.
• Modelling and synthesising multi-character interactions such as dancing and fighting.
• 3D reconstruction of human shapes from partial observations.
• Automatically capturing and analysing human-object interactions with 3D surface information.

Our Resources

Durham University hosts the UK regional supercomputer, Bede, with 128 NVIDIA V100 GPUs. On top of that, our Department hosts an NVIDIA CUDA Centre that caters to the increasing GPU demands for research purposes.

Our laboratories have an array of computer science equipment and sensors, including sensor-mounted vehicles, LiDAR, RADAR, EEG, drones, robots, cameras and more.

Supervision

You will be supervised by Prof. Hubert Shum (http://hubertshum.com/), who is a Professor of Visual Computing and the Director of Research of the Department of Computer Science at Durham University, specialising in Spatio-Temporal Modelling and Responsible AI. He is a Co-Founder and the Co-Director (Research) of Durham University Space Research Centre. He has led multiple research projects funded by the UK government and charity, providing him with the experience of supervising over 30 PhDs and many post-doctoral researchers. He hosts international conferences such as BMVC, ACM SIGGRAPH/Eurographics SCA and ACM SIGGRAPH MIG. He has authored over 180 research publications in the fields of Computer Vision, Computer Graphics, Machine Learning and Biomedical Engineering.

During the PhD study, you will receive comprehensive training and research coaching through regular one-to-one meetings with Dr Shum to develop your strengths and consolidate your research knowledge. Dr Shum’s research team has a supportive culture and provides assistance and collaboration opportunities. His past PhDs published their research in prestigious journals (e.g. IEEE TIP, IEEE TVCG and IEEE TMM) and conferences (e.g. CVPR, ICCV, ECCV).

Durham University

Durham University is a world top-100 university and is ranked the 6th in the UK. As a member university of the elite Russell Group, Durham University focuses on research excellence delivered by world-leading academics. It is the third oldest university in England, following Oxford and Cambridge, with the campus's Cathedral and Castle being a UNESCO world heritage. It is located at Durham in North East England – one of the safest cities in the UK with an affordable living cost.

Entry Requirements

• A relevant undergraduate or master’s degree with good scores.
• Knowledge of modern programming languages.
• Meet Durham's English requirements (https://www.dur.ac.uk/study/international/entry-requirements/english-language-requirements/).

How to Apply

Please send an email with your resume, transcripts, and any supporting documents to Dr Hubert Shum hubert.shum@durham.ac.uk for an initial discussion.