Building an Active Appearance Model

Question

I'm trying to build an Active Appearance Model like in this guide. But some of the comments sounds to me abstract and incomprehensible. So can you upload the entire set of files needed to create a model or send a link which has it. Thanks and sorry for my english!

Answer 1

When you download the aam project from Tim Cootes website it should have everything you need to get started.

http://www.isbe.man.ac.uk/~bim/software/am_tools_doc/

I recommend to run windows binary files with "wine" on linux. The linux binary files depend on some outdated libraries that require some effort to install properly.

The project has a few key folders: images, points, models, win_bin. "images" is the folder with image files and their corresponding .pts files go to "points" folder.

"models" folder contains configuration .smd files that you will use to build your model. The example of the accompanying smd file looks as follows:

~/Documents/am_tools/models$ cat tim_face.smd

// List of images + parameters required to define type of model
// Note: List excludes images in the separate test set (tim_face_test.smd)
model_name: tim_face
model_dir: ./
parts_file: face
image_dir: ../images/
points_dir: ../points/

shape_aligner: align_similar_2d
shape_modes:  { min: 0 max: 30 prop: 0.98 }
tex_modes:  { min: 0 max: 40 prop: 0.99 } 
combined_modes:  { min: 0 max: 30 prop: 0.99 } 
params_limiter: mdpm_box_limits
{
  sd_limits: 3
}
n_pixels: 10000
colour: Grey // Alternatives: Grey,RGB,...
// Texture Sampler can be tri_raw, tri_edge...
tex_sampler: vapm_triangle_sampler<vxl_byte>
tex_aligner: align_linear_1d
// shape_wts define how to compute relative scaling of shape & tex.
// shape_wts can be `EqualVar', `EqualEffect',...
shape_wts: EqualVar

// tex_model defines type of model to represent texture statistics, eg: pca, pca+haar1d
tex_model: pca
// Image Pyramid Builder can be gauss_byte, gauss_float, grad_float ...
pyr_builder: gauss_byte
points_pyr_builder: Same
max_im_pyr_levels: 5

// Levels of multi-res model to build :
min_level: 0
max_level: 4

// Details of points : images
training_set:
{
  107_0764.pts : 107_0764.jpg
  107_0766.pts : 107_0766.jpg
  107_0779.pts : 107_0779.jpg
  107_0780.pts : 107_0780.jpg
  107_0781.pts : 107_0781.jpg
  107_0782.pts : 107_0782.jpg
  107_0784.pts : 107_0784.jpg
  107_0785.pts : 107_0785.jpg
  107_0786.pts : 107_0786.jpg
  107_0787.pts : 107_0787.jpg
  107_0788.pts : 107_0788.jpg
  107_0789.pts : 107_0789.jpg
  107_0790.pts : 107_0790.jpg
  107_0791.pts : 107_0791.jpg
  107_0792.pts : 107_0792.jpg
}

Just make sure that the listed .pts and .jpg files are present in you images and points folders. Next run the am_build_apm.exe/am_build_aam.exe commands:

~/Documents/am_tools/win_bin$ wine am_build_apm ../models/tim_face.smd

This will create tim_face.apm file in the win_bin folder. The created model can now be viewed by running:

~/Documents/am_tools/win_bin$ wine am_view_apm.exe

and opening ~/Documents/am_tools/models/tim_face.smd file in the application menu.

Now play with different parameters in .smd file, try to add your own images with pts files, I think BioID database has a few hundred images annotated with .pts files.

http://www.bioid.com/index.php?q=downloads/software/bioid-face-database.html