Computer generated animation of faces

This report discusses the representation, animation and data collection techniques that have been developed and used to produce "realistic" computer generated half-tone animated sequences of a human face changing expression. It was determined that approximating the surface of a face with a polygonal skin containing approximately 300 polygons defined by about 400 vertices is sufficient to produce a realistic face. Animation was accomplished using a cosine interpolation scheme to fill in the intermediate frames between expressions. This approach is good enough to produce realistic facial motion. The three-dimensional data used to describe the expressions of the faces was obtained photogrammetrically using pairs of photographs.