Impact of Expressive Wrinkles on Perception of a Virtual Character's Facial Expressions of Emotions

Facial animation has reached a high level of photorealism. Skin is rendered with grain and translucency, wrinkles are accurate and dynamic. These recent visual improvements are not fully tested for their contribution to the perceived expressiveness of virtual characters. This paper presents a perceptual study assessing the impact of different rendering modes of expressive wrinkles on users’ perception of facial expressions of basic and complex emotions. Our results suggest that realistic wrinkles increase agent’s expressivity and user’s preference, but not the recognition of emotion categories. This study was conducted using our real time facial animation platform that is designed for perceptive evaluations of affective interaction.