Modeling and animating personalized faces

Abstract

A very important and challenging problem in computer graphics is modeling and animation of individualized face models. In this thesis, we describe a facial modeling and animation system attempting to address this problem. The system uses muscle-based generic face model and deforms it using deformation techniques to model individualized faces. Two orthogonal photos of the real faces are used for this purpose. Image processing techniques are employed to extract certain features on the photographs, which are then refined manually by the user through the facilities of the user interface of the system. The feature points located on the frontal and side views of a real face are used to deform the generic model. Then, the muscle vectors in the individualized face model are arranged accordingly. Individualized face models produced in this manner are animated using parametric interpolation techniques.