OMOTE Real-time Face Tracking 3D Projection Mapping

Forget the faces of historic monuments, the new frontier of 3D projection mapping is the faces of humans.

Created by Nobumichi Asai and friends, technical details behind the process are scant at the moment, but from what can be found in this Tumblr post, it’s clear that step one is a 3D scan of the model’s face.

Here is the translated text from that post:

I will continue to explain how to make a face mapping of this time.
Title OMOTE that (= table) is coming from the “ability”, but it has become the idea of Noh mask also in how to make. That is the idea, covered by creating a “surface”. That it is possible to pursue the accuracy, theme that represent a very delicate make-up art as its output was important. I started from the fact that it is 3D laser scanning the face of the model for the first.

I suspect that a structured light scanner was used to capture the geometry of the model’s face rather than a 3D laser scanner. Nonetheless, this is a very cool application of 3D projection mapping.