Images/videos have a promising future for figure animation, an entirely image/video-based approach would allow us to achieve high realism by directly utilising real images/videos. Unfortunately, making effective use of real world images/videos is not a simple task and it is very difficult to reconstruct 3D arbitrary views for human motion. Currently, the Image/Video Based Rendering(IVBR) achieves this by using either captured or adapted generic human geometry from 3D scanners or multi-cameras, which involves costly resources.In fact, the human brain has a strong in-built capacity to imagine motion from static objects. Given a few images of a human motion, we can easily interpret them by envisaging a virtual movement in our mind, without the need of any geometric information. However, existing computing technology still largely falls short of such a capability. Motivated by this observation, the proposed research is designed to take a highly speculative adventure which will explore novel techniques to equip computers with such an ability. Generally speaking, we shall look into the feasibility of making human characters alive from their static images, allowing arbitrary views of their movement to be directly reconstructed from a few key images without requiring their geometric models. While we target humans here, the methodology examined can be applicable to a broad range of articulated/non-articulated subjects. It will go beyond the current form of IVBR, which was mainly designed for objects with fixed shapes, and will aim to achieve what is traditionally feasible only with the assistance of geometric models. It could lead to an alternative that is fundamentally different from all current techniques.This feasibility study will concentrate only on the most fundamental issue of the entirely image based approach , which is the View Reconstruction for Humans (VRH), i.e. whether we can create images of a human movement under arbitrary viewpoints just from a few static images. To test the idea without losing generality, many datasets involved in our experiment will be created by computers. Once a solution to VRH is found, it will open the door to further investigation using real captured images for the training and also to work on other important issues concerning control, data organization & compression, image compositions, hair and cloth motion, etc., in follow-on projects. To allow for the completion of this feasibility study in a short period, we have designed a detailed research route. A learning-based approach will be taken to build statistical models for image sequences of human motion through training from existing examples. Subsequently, such models will be used to construct new sequences of human motion. While there are many potential ways to provide effective user controls, in order to stay focused on VRH, we shall take the most straightforward control strategy, which will use a selected number of images to indicate the key postures of the actor over the time. This is analogous to the key-frame control strategy that is widely adopted in animation.This research also has strong commercial potential in a broad range of entertainment-related businesses in areas such as image/video editing, computer games, the film industry, etc. They have a major presence in the UK and generate significant global income. It will be actively invovled by our industrial contacts at Antics Technologies and Cinesite. Cinesite is one of the largest companies in the production of computer visual effects and post production in the world, while Antics Technologies provides revolutionary software for full computer animation and has world-wide customers. They have recognized the potential market values of this research and will provide strong support through consultancy, evaluation and exploitation. Antics will provide their latest animation software release for this research at no cost.

Doctoral Training Partnerships: a range of postgraduate training is funded by the Research Councils. For information on current funding routes, see the common terminology at https://www.ukri.org/apply-for-funding/how-we-fund-studentships/. Training grants may be to one organisation or to a consortia of research organisations. This portal will show the lead organisation only.

The co-evolution and geographical spread of trees and deep-rooting systems is widely proposed to represent the 'Devonian engine' of global change that drove the weathering of soil minerals and biogeochemical cycling of elements to exert a major influence on the Earth's atmospheric CO2 history. If correct, this paradigm suggests the evolutionary appearance of forested ecosystems through the Devonian (418-360 Myr ago) constitutes the single most important biotic feedback on the geochemical carbon cycle to emerge during the entire 540 Myr duration of the Phanaerozoic. Crucially, no link has yet been established between the evolutionary advance of trees and their geochemical impacts on palaeosols. Direct evidence that one has affected the other is still awaited, largely because of the lack of cross-disciplinary investigations to date. Our proposal addresses this high level 'earth system science' challenge. The overarching objective is to provide a mechanistic understanding of how the evolutionary rise of deep-rotting forests intensified weathering and pedogenesis that constitute the primary biotic feedbacks on the long-term C-cycle. Our central hypothesis is that the evolutionary advance of trees left geochemical effects detectable in palaeosols as forested ecosystems increased the quantity and depth of chemical energy transported into the soil through roots, mycorrhizal fungi and litter. This intensified soil acidification, increased the strength of isotopic and elemental enrichment in surface soil horizons, enhanced the weathering of Ca-Si and Ca-P minerals, and the formation of pedogenic clays, leading to long-term sequestration of atmospheric CO2 through the formation of marine carbonates with the liberated terrestrial Ca. We will investigate this research hypothesis by obtaining and analysing well-preserved palaeosol profiles from a time sequence of localities in the eastern North America through the critical Silurian-Devonian interval that represents Earth's transition to a forested planet. These palaeosol sequences will then be subjected to targeted geochemical, clay mineralogical and palaeontological analyses. This will allow, for the first time, the rooting structures of mixed and monospecific Mid-Devonian forests to be directly linked to palaeosol weathering profiles obtained by drilling replicate unweathered profiles. Weathering by these forests will be compared with the 'control case' - weathering by pre-forest, early vascular land plants with diminutive/shallow rooting systems from Silurian and lower Devonian localities. These sites afford us the previously unexploited ability to characterize the evolution of plant-root-soil relationships during the critical Silurian-Devonian interval, whilst at the same time controlling for the effects of palaeogeography and provenance on palaeosol development. Applying geochemical analyses targeted at elements and isotopes that are strongly concentrated by trees at the surface of contemporary soils, and which show major changes in abundance through mineral weathering under forests, provides a powerful new strategy to resolve and reconstruct the intensity and depth of weathering and pedogenesis at different stages in the evolution of forested ecosystems. The project is tightly focused on "improving current knowledge of the interaction between the evolution of life and the Earth", which represents one of the three high level challenges within NERC's Earth System Science Theme.