Project Proposal: Facial Animation in Alias
Marcia Riley
The goal of this project is to produce some facial animation in
Alias of a model which has human-like features, starting from an
existing NURBS-based model of a human. The model need not closely
resemble a human (reality is not the point), but should convey the
impression that it is alive and either thinking, reacting, or feeling
something, as reflected by its facial behavior. The first step is
to make any desired or necessary changes to the model. Next, a
method loosely based on that described in [1] will be implemented. This
entails designing certain base movements involved in the
animation at their full intensity. In the article, these
movements correspond to muscles or groups of muscles associated
with movement in various parts of the human face. These movements can
then be combined (using features in Alias, such as
ShapeShifter) to achieve a large range of expressions, which can
then be used in an animation. As of now, I have not selected a paper
to present on this topic. I am still searching.
References:
[1] Landreth, Chris, Faces with Personality: Modeling faces that
exude personality when animated. Computer Graphics World,
February 1996.