Non-Photorealistic Computer Graphics Library

Animated Teleconferencing: Video Driven Facial Animation

Author(s): Ian Buck.
Misc: B.S.E. Undergraduate Thesis, June, 1999.
[BibTeX]

Abstract:
This work presents a method of using hand-drawn art for an animated teleconferencing system. This low bandwidth solution to teleconferencing uses a computer generated animated character to represent the expression of a human user as seen by a desktop camera. Using hand-drawn art provides many advantages over traditional teleconferencing, including privacy, bandwidth, and entertainment value. The framework of the system is divided into three components: the video tracker which is able to locate, in real-time, features on a human face from live video; an expression mapper which is able to intelligently select which artworks should be used to represent the current expression; and a rendering engine which is able to morph in real-time the artworks to produce a final image.