Paul Debevec
Senior Staff Scientist, Google Research

Paul is a Senior Team Scientist at GoogleResearch and an Adjunct Research Professor at the Institute for Creative Technologies at USC. Debevec's research on em-photogrammetry, image-based modeling and rendering, high dynamic range photography, image-based lighting, appearance acquisition, facial scanning, and photo-realistic digital actors was recognized with the "ACMSIGGRAPH's first Significant New Researcher" award in 2001, the Academy's Scientific and Engineering award in 2010, the SMPTE Progress Medal in 2017, and a second Academy Technical award in 2019. In 2002, it originated the technique of wrap-around LED lighting based on real world image for virtual production. His techniques were used to create important visual effects sequences in films such as "Matrix", "Spider Man 2", "Benjamin Button", "Avatar", "Fast and Furious 7", "Blade Runner: 2049", "The Irish", "Gemini Project", and to create a 3D portrait of American President Barack Obama. More information at: www.debevec.org...

In this lecture I will show the most recent work we've done at Google and the Institute for Creative Technologies USC to connect the real world and the virtual through photography, lighting, and machine learning. I will start by describing our DeepView solution for Light Field Video: Immersive Movies that you can move around inside after they are recorded. Our latest lightfield video techniques can record a six degree deliberate virtual reality where individuals can get close enough to the arm. I will also introduce how the new Google Light Stage, paired with machine learning techniques, is enabling new techniques for estimating face-lighting for Augmented Reality and interactive portrait re-lighting on mobile hardware. I will finally talk about how these two techniques can make possible the next advances in virtual cinematic productions, bringing together the fields of light and the re-lighting in real-time image-based lighting techniques, which are now revolutionizing the way movies and television are made.