Hierarchical modeling of a personalized face for realistic expression animation

We present a system for creating a photorealistic 3D face model of a specific person with a hierarchical structure for dynamic facial expression animation. The facial modeling procedure starts from the individual facial measurements which provides a highly accurate facial geometry and color information. Based on the reconstructed facial mesh, a deformable multi-layer soft tissue model is developed to simulate the dynamic behavior of the skin by taking into account its nonlinear stress-strain relationship. The underlying muscle and skull structure are physically modeled and integrated with the skin meshes. By taking as input a collection of reflectance images covering the face, the view-based texture blending method automatically generates a comprehensive texture map for photorealistic rendering. The resulting personalized face model with biomechanical structure is animated by numerically solving the governing dynamic equation. Using our system, we have synthesized realistic expressions on the authentic face model of a specific individual.