Easy acquisition and real-time animation of facial wrinkles

Facial animation details like wrinkles or bulges are very useful for the analysis and the interpretation of facial emotions and expressions. However, outfitting a virtual face with expression details for real-time applications is a difficult task. In this paper, we propose a mono-camera acquisition technique of facial animation details and a technique which add a wrinkle map layer (fine-scale animation) to a skinning layer (large-scale animation) for real-time rendering of a virtual 3D face. The acquisition is based on ratio image computed from two pictures of a same face, with and without expression. The real-time dynamic wrinkles technique is based on a small set of reference poses. These two methods offer an easy and low-cost way to capture facial animation details and use it for real-time facial animation. Copyright (C) 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.