Martin Guay



My background is modeling / AI ML, graphics, vision & simulation. After studying math, I started my career building video games software in Montreal. I realized I wanted to work on the new stuff and did a Master’s on simulating fluids (fire and liquids). Then I moved to France to pursue a PhD on 3D character animation at INRIA. I then joined Disney Research in Zurich where I built simulated character control using deep reinforcement learning, new augmented reality concepts such as virtual try-on, and finally a live AI talking avatar guests can speak with, which ultimately was purchased by NVIDIA.

In 2017, I saw the potential of deep learning and jumped into computer vision for tracking actors in camera for VFX. Today I lead R&D efforts in animation and VFX at Disney Research . Our team is using deep learning to built a full stack best-in-class actor tracking systems for VFX, and motion completion for animation; both of which are now used by ILM and Pixar respectively.


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List of Publications



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Skel-Betweener: a Neural Motion Rig for Interactive Motion Authoring
(Coming Soon) at SIGGRAPH Asia 2024.
Dhruv Agrawal, Jakob Buhmann, Dominik Borer, Robert W. Sumner, Martin Guay


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Skel-IK: Pose and Skeleton Aware Neural IK
SIGGRAPH Asia 2023.
Dhruv Agrawal, Dominik Borer, Jakob Buhmann, Robert W. Sumner, Martin Guay


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Trajectory Augmentation for Robust Neural Locomotion Controllers
VISIGRAPH, 2024, (Best Paper Award).
Dhruv Agrawal, Mattias Koenig, Dominik Borer, Jakob Buhmann, Robert W. Sumber, Martin Guay


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Generalized Pose Space Embeddings for Training In-the-Wild using Anaylis-by-Synthesis
arxiv, 2022.
Dominik Borer, Jakob Buhmann, Martin Guay


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Augmenting Cats and Dogs
Computer Vision, Imaging and Computer Graphics Theory and Applications
(VISIGRAPP), 2021.
D. Borer, N. Isik, J. Buhmann, M. Guay


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Mocap fusion for accurate human keypoints detection from imagery.
arxiv, 2020.
Jakob Buhmann, Dominik Borer, Martin Guay


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High Resolution Rig-space Neural Rendering
arxiv, 2019.
Dominik Borer, Jakob Buhmann, Martin Guay


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AR Costumes: Automatically Augmenting Watertight Costumes from a single RGB Image
ACM SIGGRAPH Conference on Virtual Reality and Applications in Industry (VRCAI), 2018.
Christoph Maurhofer, Gokcen Cimen, Mattia Ryffel, Robert W. Sumner, Martin Guay
PaperVideo


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AR Poser: Automatically Augmenting Mobile Pictures with Digital Avatars Imitating Poses
Computer Graphics, Visualization, Computer Vision and Image Processing (CGVCVIP), 2018.
Gokcen Cimen, Christoph Maurhofer, Robert W. Sumner, Martin Guay
PaperVideo


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Modeling Physical Interactions with Real World Objects:
Interacting with Intelligent Characters in AR

Workshop on Artificial Intelligence in Virtual and Augmented Reality, 2017.
Gokcen Cimen, Ye Yuan, Stelian Coros, Robert W. Sumner, Martin Guay



Automatically Learning a Human-friendly Parameter Space for Walking Motion using a Variational Autoencoder
Computer Graphics, Visualization, Computer Vision and Image Processing (CGVCVIP), 2016.
Marcel Ludi, Martin Guay, Brian McWilliams, Robert W. Sumner


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Animating a Conversation 3D AI Avatar
Computer Graphics, Visualization, Computer Vision and Image Processing (CGVCVIP), 2018.
Dominik Borer, Dominic Lutz, Robert W. Sumner, Martin Guay


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Keys-to-Sim: Transferring Hand-Crafted Key-framed Animations to Simulated Figures using Wide Band Stochastic Trajectory Optimization
Computer Graphics and Visual Computing (CGVC), 2018.
Dominic Borer, Robert W. Sumner, Martin Guay
PaperVideoOnline Policy Learning PDFOnline Policy Video




Using Model-based Inverse Dynamics for live-Pupetteering a 3D Character with a Tail
Computer Graphics, Visualization, Computer Vision and Image Processing (CGVCVIP), 2017.
Gokcen Cimen, Martin Guay, Stelian Coros, Robert W. Sumner


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Exploring AR and VR interactions with a fully Simulated SIMBICON 3D Character
Encyclopedia of Computer Graphics and Games, 2018.
Dominic Borer, Simone Giguarri, Robert W. Sumner, Martin Guay




Automatic Animation of a Digital Band from Midi Signals for Live Karaoke
Live Demo @ Symposium on Computer Animation (SCA), 2016.
Renzo Roth & CGL Ph.D. Students, Martin Guay



Authoring Motion Cycles
Symposium on Computer Animation (SCA), 2017.
Loïc Ciccone, Martin Guay, Mauri Nitti, Robert W. Sumner



Flow Curves: an Intuitive Interface for Coherent Scene Deformation
Pacific Graphics, 2016.
Loïc Ciccone, Martin Guay, Robert W. Sumner




Space-time sketching of character animation
SIGGRAPH 2015.
Martin Guay, Remi Ronfard, Michael Gleicher, Marie-Paule Cani



Adding dynamics to sketch-based character animation
Sketch-based modeling and interfaces (SBIM) 2015.
Martin Guay, Remi Ronfard, Michael Gleicher, Marie-Paule Cani




The Line of Action: an Intuitive Interface for Expressive Character Posing
SIGGRAPH Asia 2013.
Martin Guay, Marie-Paule Cani, Remi Ronfard






Simple rasterization-based liquids
GPU PRo 5, 2013.
Martin Guay



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Screen space animation of fire
SIGGRAPH Asia, 2011.
Martin Guay, Fabrice Colin, Richard Egli





Simple and Fast Fluids
GPU Pro 2, 2011.
Martin Guay, Fabrice Colin, Richard Egli




Multi-dimensional Unconditionally Stable Alternate Direction Explict (ADE) Scheme for the Convection-Diffusion Equation
Conference on Nonlinear Evolution Equations and Wave Phenomena: Computation and Theory, 2010.
Martin Guay, Fabrice Colin, Richard Egli



Video Games







A Game of Thrones: Genesis (PC)
PC, C++ at Cyanide Studio Montreal, 2011.





iSurf on iPhone
iOS, C++ at Cyanide Studio Montreal, 2010.








Blood Bowl
XBox 360, C++ at Cyanide Studio Montreal, 2009.