EDIT 2021-10-08: *** Virtual Background working in Zoom v5.8.0 (tested in Ubuntu 18.04)! ***

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this repo was created as part of an answer for 
https://askubuntu.com/questions/1228501/how-can-i-choose-the-zoom-virtual-background-feature-using-ubuntu/1255945#1255945

Listing below due to CC By 4.0 licensing agreement.

+ original solution is published by Ben Elder: https://elder.dev/posts/open-source-virtual-background

+ modifications made are listed below.
  + tweaked installation steps to allow softwares to work in my environment.
  + added docker-compose file.
  + updated code to obtain environment variables defined in docker-compose file.
  + updated code to monitor folder to live switch background.

summary

Follow the steps in section instructions to enable virtual background in Linux during your zoom/teams/slack meetings.

• branch master is tested with Ubuntu 20.04, Nvidia GeForce 940MX, and a crappy web cam.
• branch cpu-friendly is tested with Ubuntu 20.04 and no gpu.

Check out the original author @BenTheElder's post for a detailed explaination on what the code is doing. https://elder.dev/posts/open-source-virtual-background

Also check out a cpu-friendly derivation by fangfufu. https://github.com/fangfufu/Linux-Fake-Background-Webcam

Finally, for those interested in the underlying bodypix. Here is a detailed blog post on this amazing open source library, there is even a live demo page! https://blog.tensorflow.org/2019/11/updated-bodypix-2.html

If you have not yet gone through the above links and just want to know a bit of info on what the code/scripts are doing... essentially, we first grab image frames from the physical camera with OpenCV. For each image, the face/body is cropped with a pretrained neural net with TensorFlow.js Bodypix library, and then merged with a specified background image. The merged images are then continuously generated and used to create a video feed via pyfakewebcam and v4l2loopback. The implementation is dockerized to 2 containers, with the bodypix container handling the body detection, while the fakecam container handles the rest of the image processing, and also interfacing with the physical and virtual camera devices.

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*** Credit goes to Benjamin Elder @BenTheElder, the original author! ***

instructions

• install docker (https://docs.docker.com/engine/install/ubuntu)

• (skip if you have no GPU) install nvidia-docker (https://github.com/NVIDIA/nvidia-docker), and sudo apt install nvidia-container-runtime

• (skip if you have no GPU) test nvidia-docker is install properly

docker run --gpus all nvidia/cuda:10.0-base nvidia-smi

• install v4l2loopback

sudo apt-get upgrade -y ;\
sudo apt-get install -y v4l2loopback-dkms v4l2loopback-utils

• setup virtual video device as /dev/video20, and assuming the actual video device is /dev/video0. (for me, /dev/video20 disappears after reboot, so these commands need to be run on boot if you want this device to always appear).

sudo modprobe -r v4l2loopback ;\
sudo modprobe v4l2loopback devices=1 video_nr=20 card_label="v4l2loopback" exclusive_caps=1

• confirm virtual camera is created, for my laptop i see /dev/video0,/dev/video1 and /dev/video20.

find /dev -name 'video*'

• add root to group video (likely unecessary...)

sudo usermod -aG video root ;\
cat /etc/group | grep video

• clone repo

git clone [email protected]:pangyuteng/virtual-background.git vbkgd
cd vbkgd

• build via docker-compose

docker-compose build

• start the virtual camera via docker-compose (assuming gpu is present at /dev/nvidia0, physical video device at /dev/video0 and virtual video device at /dev/video20)

docker-compose up

If this doesn't work and you get something like ERROR: for vbkgd_bodypix_1 Cannot create container for service bodypix: Unknown runtime specified nvidia do the steps described here and restart using docker-compose up

• launch zoom/teams/slack..., select v4l2loopback as webcam

• live swap background by replacing file data/background.jpg - refresh rate hard coded at 3 seconds.

misc/notes for development

• build docker

docker build -t bodypix ./bodypix
docker build -t fakecam ./fakecam

• dev mode, remove entrypoint from Dockerfile, rebuild and run below to edit code

# in terminal 
docker run   --name=bodypix   --network=fakecam   -p 9000:9000   --gpus=all --shm-size=1g --ulimit memlock=-1 --ulimit stack=67108864 -v ${PWD}/bodypix:/src -it bodypix /bin/bash

# in another terminal
docker run  --name=fakecam   --network=fakecam  $(find /dev -name 'video*' -printf "--device %p ") -v ${PWD}/fakecam:/src -it fakecam /bin/bash

reference

https://elder.dev/posts/open-source-virtual-background/