Realistic 3d Face Modeling And Facial Animation Technology

Human face is the window of communication in real world, and virtual face is of the same importance in virtual world. Therefore, the construction and animation of realistic human facial models is always attractive to researchers in computer graphics, and as an identifiable area of the latter in the past 30 years, facial modeling and animation has been devoted to significant efforts with many dozens of research papers published. Its applications include such diverse fields as character animation for films and advertising, computer games, virtual reality, teleconferencing, user-interface, surgical facial planning, and criminal discrimination. Yet no perfectly realistic facial model and animation has ever been generated by computer, it remains one of the most fundermental, and as well the most difficult problem in computer graphics.The goal of the thesis work is to automate the challenging task of creating realistic facial models of individuals and generating basic expression animation.Modeling: This thesis develops a method different from traditional techniques that begins with the cylindrical projection of a generic model and its seamless global texture map using multiresolution technique, and then automatically fit the unwrapped cylindrical projected mesh to the texture map with an improved algorithm that based on 2D morphing to specify corresponding feature points(or lines). Finally, we propose a formula of inverse cylindrical projection to recompose the deformed mesh, and after the texture mapping a photo-realistic individual facial model is created.Expression animation: Based on Water's muscle model, 17 muscle vectors are presented to simulate facial muscles' motion by nonlinear interpolation. Meanwhile, some other parameters, for example, open of jaw and eyelids, could simply be substituted by rotation transform. Through these control parameters' interaction, highly natural looking animations have been able to generated.The work and achievement in this thesis is just fundamental and pilot study, while it can be exploited in many applications such as natural andintelligent human-machine interfaces, virtual collaboration work, virtual learning and teaching, and so on.