Real-time facial animation for virtual characters

Abstract

Facial expressions form an important part of human to human communication. In order to exploit the fall potential of computer networks and the Internet for communication and interaction, provision should be made for conveying facial expressions. This can be done by means of facial animation driven directly by the expressions of the communicating participants. This has been recognized in the new MPEG 4 standard. Such approaches overcome the very definite shortcomings of conventional video-conferencing which has demanding bandwidth requirements and limited collaborative capabilities. We report here on a prototype system for providing real-time facial animation to virtual characters across computer networks. Our system uses a performer driven approach, with markers aiding facial feature tracking. With this system we have demonstrated the feasibility of a low cost approach using cheap video cameras (web-cams) and ordinary PCs.