Facial Modeling and Animation

Abstract

In this tutorial we present an overview of the concepts and current techniques that have been developed to model and animate human faces. We introduce the research area of facial modeling and animation by its history and applications. As a necessary prerequisite for facial modeling, data acquisition is discussed in detail. We describe basic concepts of facial animation and present different approaches including parametric models, performance-, physics-, and image-based methods. State-of-the-art techniques such as MPEG-4 facial animation parameters, mass-spring networks for skin models, and face space representations are part of these approaches. We furthermore discuss texturing of head models and rendering of skin and hair, addressing problems related to texture synthesis, bump mapping with graphics hardware, and dynamics of hair. Typical applications for facial modeling and animation such as speech synchronization, head morphing, and forensic applications are presented and explained.