Design, Transformation, and Animation of Human Faces
N. Magnenat-Thalmann, H. T. Minh, M. de Angelis, and D. Thalmann
Visual Computer, 1989
Abstract
Creation of new human faces for synthetic actors is a tedious and
painful task. The situation may be improved by introducing tools
for the creation. Two approaches are discussed in this paper:
modification and edition of an existing synthetic actor using local
transformations; generation of new synthetic actors obtained by
interpolation between two existing actors; creation of a synthetic
actor by composition of different parts. This paper also describes the
methods usied in the facial animation of synthetic actors who change
their personalities from one person to another. This means that our
purpose is to transform one character into another, and also to
transform the animation at the same time. The method has been
completely implemented and integrated into the Human Factory software.
Summary
To interpolate between two faces, we can either make facets appear
or disappear in order to obtain a good correspondence, or reorganize
(resample) both figures by creating a structure of facets common to
both face meshes. The approach taken by the paper is the latter.
The faces are controlled at three levels of interaction. The first
level allows access to facial parameters to define the basic
deformations. The second level abstracts a set of parameters to
form expressions to mimic phonemes or shape expressions. The third
level controls the time at which certain expressions are expected
of a digital actor.