Rémi Ronfard: Directing Virtual Worlds

Rémi Ronfard, Directing Virtual Worlds

I am a research director at Inria, and the scientific leader of the Anima team. 
I graduated from Mines Paris Tech in 1986, where I also got my PhD in 1991. I have conducted research in a variety of domains, from geometric design to 3D animation and computer vision.
This includes work on non-manifold topology in CATIA (Dassault Systèmes, 1991), mesh LODs (IBM Research, 1992), digital cartoon storyboarding (INA, 1995), aesthetic surface design (IBM Research and Dassault Systèmes, 2000), video indexing (INA, 2000), action recognition and statistical analysis of image and film styles (INRIA 2002-2007). I was an expert in the international MPEG group from
1997 to 2000.
I joined Inria in 2002 as a senior researcher (Chargé de Recherche) first in the MOVI team, then the LEAR team.
In 2007, I was the R&D director for virtual cinematography at Xtranormal Technologies. My team created the patented “magicam” system, which was used to produce two million user-generated animation movies.
I came back to INRIA in 2009 with a new research program devoted to  “directing virtual worlds”. I helped create the IMAGINE team in 2012, focusing on the “narrative design” part of the project.
Towards this goal, I investigate computational models of visual storytelling and movie-making. This leads to inspiring collaborations with the national  film school (ENS Louis Lumière), Célestins Theatre in Lyon, University of Geneva, Bernard Stiegler’s Institut de Recherche et d’Innovation, and with companies UBICAST, Thalès-Angénieux and Binocle 3D.
I have co-chaired international workshops on modeling people and human interaction (Beijing, 2005), 3-D cinematography (New York City, 2006; Banff, 2008; Providence, 2012), intelligent cinematography and editing (Quebec, 2014; Zurich, 2015; Lisbon, 2016), computational models of narratives (Atlanta, 2015, Krakow, 2016) and Computer Theater (Grenoble, 2020).
I served as head of the “Geometry and Image” Department at Laboratoire Jean Kuntzmann, University of Grenoble from 2012 to 2016.

Publications

Diploma

• 1986 : MsC in Engineering, Ecole des Mines de Paris.
• 1991 : PhD in Computer Science, Ecole des Mines de Paris.
• 2009 : HDR in Computer Science, Grenoble University.
• 2012 : Qualification for Professorship in Computer Science (2012).

Appointments held

• Since 2018,  part-time associate researcher at ENSADLAB.
• Since 2016 : Research Director at INRIA (DR2)..
• 2002-2015 : Researcher at INRIA (CR1).
• 2007-2008 : Team leader for Virtual Cinematography R&D, Xtranormal Technologies, Montreal, Canada.
• 2000-2001 : Visiting scientist, IBM T.J. Watson Research Center, Yorktown Heights, USA.
• 1994-2000 : Research Engineer, Institut National de l’Audiovisuel, including 3 years as team leader for European Project DiVAN : Distributed Video Archive Network.
• 1992-1994 : Post-doc, IBM T.J. Watson Research Center, Yorktown Heights, USA.
• 1991-1992 : Research Engineer, Dassault Systèmes.

Research interests and Publications

• Computer Graphics, Computer Vision, Video Indexing.
• 8 PhD theses (advised or co-advised)
• Publications :
  • 17 Journal papers (international, refereed)
  • 45 International Conference papers (refereed, selection committee)
  • My page at Google Scholar
  • My page at DBLP
  • My page at Semantic Scholar

5 most cited publications :

• R Ronfard: Region-based strategies for active contour models, International Journal of Computer Vision 13 (2), 229-251, 1994.
• R Ronfard, J Rossignac: Full-range approximation of triangulated polyhedra. Computer Graphics Forum 15 (3), 67-76, 1996.
• D Weinland, R Ronfard, E Boyer:A survey of vision-based methods for action representation, segmentation and recognition. Computer Vision and Image Understanding, 2011
• D. Weinland, R. Ronfard, E. Boyer: Free viewpoint action recognition using motion history volumes. Computer Vision and Image Understanding 1 (2), 2006.
• D. Weinland, E Boyer, R Ronfard: Action recognition from arbitrary views using 3d exemplars. ICCV 2007.

Local scientific leadership :

• Member of the « Commission de Spécialistes » (selection jury for assistant professors), Université Joseph Fourier (2005-2007).
• Leader of the INRIA-Brown University Associate Team VAMP (Video and Mesh Processing for 3D Cinematography) with Gabriel Taubin et Chad Jenkins (2005-2007).
• Head of Image and Geometry Department at Laboratoire Jean Kuntzman (LJK), Grenoble University 2011-2015).
• Scientific leader of the IMAGINE team since 2016.
• Executive committee member of Performance Lab project at Univ. Grenoble Alpes since 2018.

Service to the community :

• International expert in the MPEG group (1997-1999).
• Co-organizer of international workshop on “Modeling People and Human Interaction”, associated with ICCV in Beijing, 2005 (with Pascal Fua, Adrian Hilton, Daniel Gatica-Perez and Marian Stewart Bartlett).
• Co-organizer of 3 international workshops on « 3-D Cinematography » in New York 2006, Banff Center 2008 and Providence 2012 (with Gabriel Taubin).
• Co-editor of the book « 3-D Cinematography » published by Springer-Verlag in 2010.
• Co-organizer of the Eurographics Workshop on Intelligent Cinematography and Editing (WICED) and Computational Model of Narrative (CMN) series since 2015.
• Co-organizer of the first Symposium on Computer Theater (Journés d’Informatique Théâtrale) in Grenoble in February 2020.