271 research outputs found
Modeling Caricature Expressions by 3D Blendshape and Dynamic Texture
The problem of deforming an artist-drawn caricature according to a given
normal face expression is of interest in applications such as social media,
animation and entertainment. This paper presents a solution to the problem,
with an emphasis on enhancing the ability to create desired expressions and
meanwhile preserve the identity exaggeration style of the caricature, which
imposes challenges due to the complicated nature of caricatures. The key of our
solution is a novel method to model caricature expression, which extends
traditional 3DMM representation to caricature domain. The method consists of
shape modelling and texture generation for caricatures. Geometric optimization
is developed to create identity-preserving blendshapes for reconstructing
accurate and stable geometric shape, and a conditional generative adversarial
network (cGAN) is designed for generating dynamic textures under target
expressions. The combination of both shape and texture components makes the
non-trivial expressions of a caricature be effectively defined by the extension
of the popular 3DMM representation and a caricature can thus be flexibly
deformed into arbitrary expressions with good results visually in both shape
and color spaces. The experiments demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed
method.Comment: Accepted by the 28th ACM International Conference on Multimedia (ACM
MM 2020
Analysis and comparison of facial animation algorithms: caricatures
The thesis will be aimed to review what has been done from around the 2000 until
now regarding the caricature generation field in 2D.
It will be organized in classifying the methods found first, telling their contributions
to the field and choosing a paper among them to implement and discuss more
thoroughly. A total of three papers will be selected.
Finally, an overview discussion on the papers implemented and their contributions to
the field will be given.
Brief comment on the Master Thesis small change of title:
In the very beginning, when I was planning to do the thesis, I talked with my tutor
and found that doing a review and comparison of some methods in the facial
animation field would suit. However, while reading papers on the topic, I found that a
great number of them required hardware which I didn’t have any access to.
The generation of 2D caricatures is still close to the field, and it didn’t need any
additional hardware devic
FacEMOTE: Qualitative Parametric Modifiers for Facial Animations
We propose a control mechanism for facial expressions by applying a few carefully chosen parametric modifications to preexisting expression data streams. This approach applies to any facial animation resource expressed in the general MPEG-4 form, whether taken from a library of preset facial expressions, captured from live performance, or entirely manually created. The MPEG-4 Facial Animation Parameters (FAPs) represent a facial expression as a set of parameterized muscle actions, given as intensity of individual muscle movements over time. Our system varies expressions by changing the intensities and scope of sets of MPEG-4 FAPs. It creates variations in “expressiveness” across the face model rather than simply scale, interpolate, or blend facial mesh node positions. The parameters are adapted from the Effort parameters of Laban Movement Analysis (LMA); we developed a mapping from their values onto sets of FAPs. The FacEMOTE parameters thus perturb a base expression to create a wide range of expressions. Such an approach could allow real-time face animations to change underlying speech or facial expression shapes dynamically according to current agent affect or user interaction needs
A Survey of Computer Graphics Facial Animation Methods: Comparing Traditional Approaches to Machine Learning Methods
Human communications rely on facial expression to denote mood, sentiment, and intent. Realistic facial animation of computer graphic models of human faces can be difficult to achieve as a result of the many details that must be approximated in generating believable facial expressions. Many theoretical approaches have been researched and implemented to create more and more accurate animations that can effectively portray human emotions. Even though many of these approaches are able to generate realistic looking expressions, they typically require a lot of artistic intervention to achieve a believable result. To reduce the intervention needed to create realistic facial animation, new approaches that utilize machine learning are being researched to reduce the amount of effort needed to generate believable facial animations. This survey paper summarizes over 20 research papers related to facial animation and compares the traditional animation approaches to newer machine learning methods as well as highlights the strengths, weaknesses, and use cases of each different approach
Facial Expression Retargeting from Human to Avatar Made Easy
Facial expression retargeting from humans to virtual characters is a useful
technique in computer graphics and animation. Traditional methods use markers
or blendshapes to construct a mapping between the human and avatar faces.
However, these approaches require a tedious 3D modeling process, and the
performance relies on the modelers' experience. In this paper, we propose a
brand-new solution to this cross-domain expression transfer problem via
nonlinear expression embedding and expression domain translation. We first
build low-dimensional latent spaces for the human and avatar facial expressions
with variational autoencoder. Then we construct correspondences between the two
latent spaces guided by geometric and perceptual constraints. Specifically, we
design geometric correspondences to reflect geometric matching and utilize a
triplet data structure to express users' perceptual preference of avatar
expressions. A user-friendly method is proposed to automatically generate
triplets for a system allowing users to easily and efficiently annotate the
correspondences. Using both geometric and perceptual correspondences, we
trained a network for expression domain translation from human to avatar.
Extensive experimental results and user studies demonstrate that even
nonprofessional users can apply our method to generate high-quality facial
expression retargeting results with less time and effort.Comment: IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics (TVCG), to
appea
THREE DIMENSIONAL MODELING AND ANIMATION OF FACIAL EXPRESSIONS
Facial expression and animation are important aspects of the 3D environment featuring human characters. These animations are frequently used in many kinds of applications and there have been many efforts to increase the realism. Three aspects are still stimulating active research: the detailed subtle facial expressions, the process of rigging a face, and the transfer of an expression from one person to another. This dissertation focuses on the above three aspects.
A system for freely designing and creating detailed, dynamic, and animated facial expressions is developed. The presented pattern functions produce detailed and animated facial expressions. The system produces realistic results with fast performance, and allows users to directly manipulate it and see immediate results.
Two unique methods for generating real-time, vivid, and animated tears have been developed and implemented. One method is for generating a teardrop that continually changes its shape as the tear drips down the face. The other is for generating a shedding tear, which is a kind of tear that seamlessly connects with the skin as it flows along the surface of the face, but remains an individual object. The methods both broaden CG and increase the realism of facial expressions.
A new method to automatically set the bones on facial/head models to speed up the rigging process of a human face is also developed. To accomplish this, vertices that describe the face/head as well as relationships between each part of the face/head are grouped. The average distance between pairs of vertices is used to place the head bones. To set the bones in the face with multi-density, the mean value of the vertices in a group is measured. The time saved with this method is significant.
A novel method to produce realistic expressions and animations by transferring an existing expression to a new facial model is developed. The approach is to transform the source model into the target model, which then has the same topology as the source model. The displacement vectors are calculated. Each vertex in the source model is mapped to the target model. The spatial relationships of each mapped vertex are constrained
The Stretch-Engine: A Method for Creating Exaggeration in Animation Through Squash and Stretch
Animators exaggerate character motion to emphasize personality and actions. Exaggeration is expressed by pushing a character’s pose, changing the action’s timing, or by changing a character’s form. This last method, referred to as squash and stretch, creates the most noticeable change in exaggeration. However, without practice, squash and stretch can adversely affect the animation. This work introduces a method to create exaggeration in motion by focusing solely on squash and stretch to control changes in a character’s form. It does this by displaying a limbs' path of motion and altering the shape of that path to create a change in the limb’s form. This paper provides information on tools that exist to create animation and exaggeration, then discusses the functionality and effectiveness of these tools and how they influenced the design of the Stretch-Engine. The Stretch-Engine is a prototype tool developed to demonstrate this approach and is designed to be integrated into an existing animation software, Maya. The Stretch-Engine contains a bipedal-humanoid rig with controls necessary for animation and the ability to squash and stretch. It can be accessed through a user interface that allows the animator to control squash and stretch by changing the shape of generated paths of motion. This method is then evaluated by comparing animations of realistic motion to versions created with the Stretch-Engine. These stretched versions displayed exaggerated results for their realistic counterparts, creating similar effects to Looney Tunes animation. This method fits within the animator’s workflow and helps new artists visualize and control squash and stretch to create exaggeration
Sketch-based skeleton-driven 2D animation and motion capture.
This research is concerned with the development of a set of novel sketch-based skeleton-driven 2D animation techniques, which allow the user to produce realistic 2D character animation efficiently. The technique consists of three parts: sketch-based skeleton-driven 2D animation production, 2D motion capture and a cartoon animation filter. For 2D animation production, the traditional way is drawing the key-frames by experienced animators manually. It is a laborious and time-consuming process. With the proposed techniques, the user only inputs one image ofa character and sketches a skeleton for each subsequent key-frame. The system then deforms the character according to the sketches and produces animation automatically. To perform 2D shape deformation, a variable-length needle model is developed, which divides the deformation into two stages: skeleton driven deformation and nonlinear deformation in joint areas. This approach preserves the local geometric features and global area during animation. Compared with existing 2D shape deformation algorithms, it reduces the computation complexity while still yielding plausible deformation results. To capture the motion of a character from exiting 2D image sequences, a 2D motion capture technique is presented. Since this technique is skeleton-driven, the motion of a 2D character is captured by tracking the joint positions. Using both geometric and visual features, this problem can be solved by ptimization, which prevents self-occlusion and feature disappearance. After tracking, the motion data are retargeted to a new character using the deformation algorithm proposed in the first part. This facilitates the reuse of the characteristics of motion contained in existing moving images, making the process of cartoon generation easy for artists and novices alike. Subsequent to the 2D animation production and motion capture,"Cartoon Animation Filter" is implemented and applied. Following the animation principles, this filter processes two types of
cartoon input: a single frame of a cartoon character and motion capture data from an image sequence. It adds anticipation and follow-through to the motion with related squash and stretch effect
A Revisit of Shape Editing Techniques: from the Geometric to the Neural Viewpoint
3D shape editing is widely used in a range of applications such as movie
production, computer games and computer aided design. It is also a popular
research topic in computer graphics and computer vision. In past decades,
researchers have developed a series of editing methods to make the editing
process faster, more robust, and more reliable. Traditionally, the deformed
shape is determined by the optimal transformation and weights for an energy
term. With increasing availability of 3D shapes on the Internet, data-driven
methods were proposed to improve the editing results. More recently as the deep
neural networks became popular, many deep learning based editing methods have
been developed in this field, which is naturally data-driven. We mainly survey
recent research works from the geometric viewpoint to those emerging neural
deformation techniques and categorize them into organic shape editing methods
and man-made model editing methods. Both traditional methods and recent neural
network based methods are reviewed
Geometric Expression Invariant 3D Face Recognition using Statistical Discriminant Models
Currently there is no complete face recognition system that is invariant to all facial expressions.
Although humans find it easy to identify and recognise faces regardless of changes in illumination,
pose and expression, producing a computer system with a similar capability has proved to
be particularly di cult. Three dimensional face models are geometric in nature and therefore
have the advantage of being invariant to head pose and lighting. However they are still susceptible
to facial expressions. This can be seen in the decrease in the recognition results using
principal component analysis when expressions are added to a data set.
In order to achieve expression-invariant face recognition systems, we have employed a tensor
algebra framework to represent 3D face data with facial expressions in a parsimonious
space. Face variation factors are organised in particular subject and facial expression modes.
We manipulate this using single value decomposition on sub-tensors representing one variation
mode. This framework possesses the ability to deal with the shortcomings of PCA in less constrained
environments and still preserves the integrity of the 3D data. The results show improved
recognition rates for faces and facial expressions, even recognising high intensity expressions
that are not in the training datasets.
We have determined, experimentally, a set of anatomical landmarks that best describe facial
expression e ectively. We found that the best placement of landmarks to distinguish di erent
facial expressions are in areas around the prominent features, such as the cheeks and eyebrows.
Recognition results using landmark-based face recognition could be improved with better placement.
We looked into the possibility of achieving expression-invariant face recognition by reconstructing
and manipulating realistic facial expressions. We proposed a tensor-based statistical
discriminant analysis method to reconstruct facial expressions and in particular to neutralise
facial expressions. The results of the synthesised facial expressions are visually more realistic
than facial expressions generated using conventional active shape modelling (ASM). We
then used reconstructed neutral faces in the sub-tensor framework for recognition purposes.
The recognition results showed slight improvement. Besides biometric recognition, this novel
tensor-based synthesis approach could be used in computer games and real-time animation
applications
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