Chapter 10

Facial Animation

Realistic facial animation is one of the most difficult tasks that a computer animator can be asked to do. Human faces are familiar to us all. Facial motion adheres to an underlying, well-defined structure but is idiosyncratic. A face has a single mechanical articulator but has a flexible covering capable of subtle expression and rapid, complex lip movements during speech.

The face is an important component in modeling a figure, because it is the main instrument for communication and for defining a figure’s mood and personality. Animation of speech is especially demanding because of the requirement for audio synchronization (and, therefore, is often referred to as lip-sync animation). In addition, a good facial model ...

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