Front View vs. Side View of Facial and Postural Expressions of Emotions in a Virtual Character

In 3D virtual environments and social scenes, virtual characters are not always visible from a front view. Nonverbal expressions of emotions should be designed so as to be properly perceived when viewed from multiple angles. Our platform enables the design of facial expressions including 3D expressive wrinkles and 3D postures. It was used to generate stimuli for studying the impact of front versus side views on the perception of blends of facial and postural expressions of emotions. Results observed in previous studies for front views of incongruent images are confirmed for side views. Furthermore, subjects were less confident in their ratings for side views images than for front