Facial Animation with OpenGL

By Nick Patti

Project Synopsis

• Model a 3D human head

• Have it recite a line from a film

• Manipulate “muscles” in way to make the model emote

QuickTime™ and a decompressor

are needed to see this picture.

Research and Helpful Texts

• Various animating techniques– http://www.dipaola.org/stanford/facial/class8notes.

html

• Computer Facial Animation by Parke and Waters

• Geometry-based Muscle Modulation for Facial Animation– http://www.mpi-inf.mpg.de/resources/FAM/publ/gi2

001.pdf

To-do List

• Find a face model, integrate with Prog 0, find a good line for model to recite

• Finish updating Prog 0 code to operate within desired specs

• Find out how to play sound using C++, implement cueing sound when button is pressed

• Project update and sanity check, experiment with animating with current working version of project

• Begin animating the face to the appropriate specifications. Clean up project and submit!

Progress: Reading Files

• .coor .poly file format is not feasible– Not a conventional file format that can easily be

found– Requires that I make my own model, too much

time

• Experimented with other file formats– Most spat out really weird junk…

• A reliable file format, .obj– Easy to interpret data, including vertices, normals,

and even textures

Progress: UI

• Revamp previous system from Prog0– Mouse controls rather than keyboard

controls to rotate and zoom camera• Press ‘p’ to play the animation and audio

– Found BASS Library to be quite useful– Possible spring/keyframe animation

algorithm to animate

Progress: Animation

• Facial animation not really new, many ways to go about it

• Parke and Waters’s book contains various techniques using OpenGL– Cannot access examples, however…

• Expressions Toolkit may also serve as a useful starting point

• Still happy to take suggestions, though– A means to animate faces without an underlying

substructure, perhaps?

Questions or Concerns?