FaceStyler - Realism and Believability in MPEG-4 Facial Models

This research shows that it is possible to create a realistic MPEG-4 head model by texture mapping the face (nose, mouth, chin, cheeks and ears), the hair, the eyes, and the environment.

The Face Styler is an easy to use tool than can create such realistic heads. It imports images of a person's head acquired from a variety of sources, such as digital cameras, scanned books and photographs, or public archives on the Internet. Using these images, an MPEG-4 compliant head described using Facial Definition Parameters (FDPs) can be interactively created in 15 minutes.

The Face Styler generates data that can be directly imported by the Facial Animation Engine (FAE), which is an implementation of an MPEG-4 facial animation system. The FAE does not have the ability to display realistic hair or an environment. However, a loosely coupled integration layer provides this functionality without modifying the internals of the FAE.

The realistic head can be rendered in realtime on low-end consumer graphics cards that support OpenGL. Combined with realistic speech and human personality, this interactive talking head is a believable human-computer interface.

Supplemental CD

The Supplemental CD contains the proposal, the dissertation and the final presentation. It also contains the FaceStyler and Faedra applications. It does not contain any source code. Please contact the School of Computing at Curtin University to access the source.

View the Supplemental CD at facestyler.btschirren.net (opens a new window).