We present an approach for simultaneous monocular 3D face pose and facial animation tracking. The pose and facial features are estimated from observed raw brightness shape-free 2D image patches. A parameterized 3D face model is adopted to crop out and to normalize the shape of patches from video frames. Starting from the face model aligned on an observed human face, we learn the relation betwee...

We describe tools that use measurements from video for the extraction of facial modeling and animation parameters, head tracking, and real-time interactive facial animation. These tools share common goals but rely on varying details of physical and geometric modeling and in their input measurement system. Accurate facial modeling involves fine details of geometry and muscle coarticulation. By c...

This paper studies a new method for three-dimensional (3D) facial model adaptation and its integration into a Text-to-Speech (TTS) system. The TTS System pronounces, in real time, English or Greek speech and simultaneously animates the adapted face model, thus simulating a natural talking face. The 3D facial adaptation requires a set of two orthogonal views of the user’s face with a number of f...

The paper describes strategy and results for an evaluation of the naturalness of a facial animation system with the help of hearing-impaired persons. It shows perspectives for improvement of the facial animation model, independent on the animation model itself. The fundamental thesis of the evaluation is that the comparison of presented and perceived visual information has to be performed on ba...

Automatic synthesis of facial animation in Computer Graphics is a challenging task and although the problem is three decades old by now, there is still not a unified method to solve it. This is mainly due to the complex mathematical model required to reproduce the visual meanings of facial expressions coupled with the computational speed needed to run interactive applications. In this thesis, t...

This paper tries to find the various functions involved in an animation system and how virtual reality techniques and multimedia input could play a role. A classification of VR-based methods is proposed: real-time rotoscopy methods, real-time direct metaphors and real-time recognitionbased metaphors. Several examples are presented: 3D shape creation, camera motion, body motion control, hand ani...

In this paper, we show how 3-D input devices used in virtual reality may drastically change the way of designing animation scenes. We analyze the various stages of animation production and show when and how these new concepts/devices may be involved into the creation process. We illustrate this new approach by describing the 5th Dimension animation system developed in our laboratories. We empha...

Multi-Dimensional Dynamic Time Warping for Image Texture Similarity p. 23 Audio-to-Visual Conversion Via HMM Inversion for Speech-Driven Facial Animation p. 33 Discriminant Eigenfaces: A New Ranking Method for Principal Components Analysis p. 43 Distributed AI: Autonomous Agents, Multi-Agent Systems and Game Theory Enhancing the Interaction between Agents and Users p. 53 Re-routing Agents in an...

Muscle-based models of the human face produce high quality animation but rely on recorded muscle activity signals or synthetic muscle signals often derived by trial and error. In this paper we present a dynamic inversion of a muscle-based model [1] that permits the animation to be created from kinematic recordings of facial movements. Using a nonlinear optimizer (Powell’s algorithm) the inversi...