An approximative and semi-automated method to create MPEG-4 compliant human face models

DOI: https://doi.org/10.14232/actacyb.23.4.2018.5
Keywords: MPEG-4, talking head, facial animation, automation, cage based deformation

Abstract

In this paper, we introduce our method to facilitate the process of creating an MPEG-4 compliant face model based on a simple 3D mesh. The presented method is semi-automatic, and the user needs to choose only a few points on the model as a preprocessing step. We use a cage based deformation technique to approximate an input model with a generic one which already contains the required MPEG-4 parameters. In the paper, we also show how the cage can be constructed to surround the model completely and be close enough to the head to get better deformation results. After these steps, the resulting model can be used in any MPEG-4 based facial animation player.

Downloads

Download data is not yet available.

References


  1. Autodesk, Inc.
    Autodesk 123D Catch.
    URL: http://www.123dapp.com/catch/.
    Accessed: 28 May 2015.

  2. Balci, K.
    Xface: MPEG-4 Based Open Source Toolkit for 3D Facial Animation.
    In Proceedings of the Working Conference on Advanced Visual Interfaces, pages 399-402, 2004.
    DOI: 10.1145/989863.989935.

  3. Blender Online Community.
    Blender - a 3D modelling and rendering package.
    URL: http://www.blender.org/.
    Accessed: 7 March 2015.

  4. Cao, C., Weng, Y., Lin, S., and Zhou, K.
    3D Shape Regression for Real-time Facial Animation.
    ACM Transactions on Graphics, 32(4):41:1-41:10, 2013.
    DOI: 10.1145/2461912.2462012.

  5. CNR, Visual Computing Lab ISTI.
    MeshLab.
    URL: http://meshlab.sourceforge.net/.
    Accessed: 1 February 2015.

  6. Cosi, P., Fusaro, A., and Tisato, G.
    LUCIA a New Italian Talking-Head Based on a Modified Cohen-Massaro's Labial Coarticulation Model.
    In INTERSPEECH, pages 2269-2272, 2003.

  7. de Rosis, F., Pelachaud, C., Poggi, I., Carofiglio, V., and De Carolis, B.
    From Greta's mind to her face: modelling the dynamics of affective states in a conversational embodied agent.
    International Journal of Human Computer Studies, 59(1-2):81-118, 2003.
    DOI: 10.1016/S1071-5819(03)00020-X.

  8. Escher, M., Pandzic, I., and Thalmann, N. M.
    Facial deformations for MPEG-4.
    In Proceedings Computer Animation '98 (Cat. No.98EX169), pages 56-62, June 1998.
    DOI: 10.1109/CA.1998.681908.

  9. Feng, A., Rosenberg, E. S., and Shapiro, A.
    Just-in-time, viable, 3-D avatars from scans.
    Computer Animation and Virtual Worlds, 28(3-4):e1769, 2017.

  10. Fergus, P., El Rhalibi, A., Carter, C., and Cooper, S.
    Towards an avatar mentor framework to support physical and psychosocial treatments.
    Health and Technology, 2(1):17-31, 2012.
    DOI: 10.1007/s12553-011-0013-0.

  11. Jia, J., Zhang, S., Meng, F., Wang, Y., and Cai, L.
    Emotional Audio-Visual Speech Synthesis Based on PAD.
    IEEE Transactions on Audio, Speech, and Language Processing, 19(3):570-582, 2011.
    DOI: 10.1109/TASL.2010.2052246.

  12. Joshi, P., Meyer, M., DeRose, T., Green, B., and Sanocki, T.
    Harmonic Coordinates for Character Articulation.
    ACM Transactions on Graphics, 26(3):71, 2007.
    DOI: 10.1145/1276377.1276466.

  13. Lavagetto, F. and Pockaj, R.
    The facial animation engine: toward a high-level interface for the design of MPEG-4 compliant animated faces.
    IEEE Transactions on Circuits and Systems for Video Technology, 9(2):277-289, 1999.
    DOI: 10.1109/76.752095.

  14. Lundqvist, D., Flykt, A., and Öhman, A.
    The Karolinska Directed Emotional Faces (KDEF).
    CD ROM from Department of Clinical Neuroscience. Psychology section, Karolinska Institutet, ISBN 91-630-7164-9. 1998.

  15. Nieto, J. R. and Susín, A.
    Cage based deformations: A survey.
    In Deformation Models: Tracking, Animation and Applications, pages 75-99. Springer Netherlands, Dordrecht, 2013,
    DOI: 10.1007/978-94-007-5446-1_3.

  16. Pandzic, I. S. and Forchheimer, R., editors.
    MPEG-4 Facial Animation: The Standard, Implementation and Applications.
    John Wiley & Sons, Inc., New York, NY, USA, 2003.

  17. Parke, F. I. and Waters, K.
    Computer Facial Animation.
    CRC Press, 2008.

  18. Pyun, H., Kim, Y., Chae, W., Kang, H. W., and Shin, S. Y.
    An Example-based Approach for Facial Expression Cloning.
    In Proceedings of the 2003 ACM SIGGRAPH/Eurographics Symposium on Computer Animation, pages 167-176, 2003.
    DOI: 10.1145/1185657.1185863.

  19. Rácz, R., Tóth, Á., Papp, I., and Kunkli, R.
    Full-body animations and new faces for a WebGL based MPEG-4 avatar.
    In CogInfoCom 2015: 6th IEEE International Conference on Cognitive Infocommunications, pages 419-420, 2015.
    DOI: 10.1109/CogInfoCom.2015.7390630.

  20. Rhalibi, A. E., Carter, C., Cooper, S., Merabti, M., and Price, M.
    Charisma: High-performance Web-based MPEG-compliant Animation Framework.
    Computers in Entertainment, 8(2):8:1-8:15, 2010.
    DOI: 10.1145/1899687.1899690.

  21. Sheng, Y., Willis, P., Gonzalez Castro, G., and Ugail, H.
    PDE-Based Facial Animation: Making the Complex Simple.
    In Advances in Visual Computing, pages 723-732. Springer Berlin Heidelberg, 2008.
    DOI: 10.1007/978-3-540-89646-3\_71.

  22. Singh, K. and Kokkevis, E.
    Skinning Characters using Surface Oriented Free-Form Deformations.
    In Proceedings of the Graphics Interface 2000 Conference, pages 35-42, 2000.
    DOI: 10.20380/GI2000.06.

  23. Technologies, Visage.
    Visage Technologies - Face Tracking and Analysis.
    URL: http://visagetechnologies.com/.
    Accessed: 15 March 2017.

  24. The MakeHuman team.
    MakeHuman.
    URL: http://www.makehuman.org/.
    Accessed: 26 September 2014.

  25. Tóth, Á. and Kunkli, R.
    Standardize Me.
    URL: https://arato.inf.unideb.hu/kunkli.roland/software/standardize-me-toolkit/.
    URL: https://github.com/dragostej/standardizeme.
    Accessed: 2 October 2017.

  26. Weise, T., Li, H., Van Gool, L., and Pauly, M.
    Face / Off : Live Facial Puppetry.
    In Proceedings of the 2009 ACM SIGGRAPH/Eurographics Symposium on Computer Animation, pages 7-16, 2009.
    DOI: 10.1145/1599470.1599472.

  27. Yin, L., Wei, X., Sun, Y., Wang, J., and Rosato, M. J.
    A 3D Facial Expression Database for Facial Behavior Research.
    In 7th International Conference on Automatic Face and Gesture Recognition (FGR06), pages 211-216, 2006.
    DOI: 10.1109/FGR.2006.6.

Published
2018-12-14
How to Cite
Tóth, Ákos, & Kunkli, R. (2018). An approximative and semi-automated method to create MPEG-4 compliant human face models. Acta Cybernetica, 23(4), 1055-1069. https://doi.org/10.14232/actacyb.23.4.2018.5
Issue
Vol 23 No 4 (2018)
Section
Regular articles