Practice and Theory of Blendshape Facial Models

Abstract

''Blendshapes'', a simple linear model of facial expression, is the prevalent approach to realistic facial animation. It has driven animated characters in Hollywood films, and is a standard feature of commercial animation packages. The blendshape approach originated in industry, and became a subject of academic research relatively recently. This report describes the published state of the art in this area, covering both literature from the graphics research community, and developments published in industry forums. We show that, despite the simplicity of the blendshape approach, there remain open problems associated with this fundamental technique.