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We develop a new 3D hierarchical model of the human face. The model incorporates a physically‐based approximation to facial tissue and a set of anatomically‐motivated facial muscle actuators. Despite its sophistication, the model is efficient enough to produce facial animation at interactive rates on a high‐end graphics workstation. A second contribution of this paper is a technique for estimating muscle contractions from video sequences of human faces performing expressive articulations. These estimates may be input as dynamic control parameters to the face model in order to produce realistic animation. Using an example, we demonstrate that our technique yields sufficiently accurate muscle contraction estimates for the model to reconstruct expressions from dynamic images of faces.

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Abstrucf-We present a new approach to the analysis of dynamic facial images for the purposes of estimating and resynthesizing dynamic facial expressions. The approach exploits a sophisticated generative model of the human face originally developed for realistic facial animation. The face model, which may be simulated and rendered at interactive rates on a graphics workstation, incorporates a physics-based synthetic facial tissue and a set of anatomically motivated facial muscle actuators. We consider the estimation of dynamic facial muscle contractions from video sequences of expressive human faces. We develop an estimation technique that uses deformable contour models (snakes) to track the nonrigid motions of facial features in video images. The technique estimates muscle actuator controls with sufficient accuracy to permit the face model to resynthesize transient expressions.

The development of a parameterized facial muscle process, that incorporates the use of a model to cream realistic facial animation is described.Existing methods of facial parametedzation have the inherent problem of hard-wiring performable actions. The development of a muscle process that is controllable by a limited number of parameters and is non-specific to facial topology allows a richer vocabulary and a more general approach to the modelling of the primary facial expressions.A brief discussion of facial structure is given, from which a method for a simple modelling of a muscle process that is suitable for the animation of a number of divergent facial types is described.