Apparatus and method for generating facial animation
First Claim
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1. An apparatus for generating facial animation, the apparatus comprising:
- a pre-processing unit for selecting an image frame having a facial region that is most similar to a facial region of one of a plurality of key models of facial characters, from a sequence of image frames, each image frame being divided into a plurality of facial regions;
a facial animation generation unit for determining a blending weight for each selected facial region of the key models using the selected facial region and for synthesizing facial character shapes on a facial region-by-facial region basis using the determined blending weight for each facial region of each of the key models; and
a display device for displaying facial animation,wherein the pre-processing unit compares directions of respective two-dimensional (2D) displacement vectors of vertices included in each key model with directions of respective optical flow vectors of pixels included in each image frame and calculates a similarity between the directions, wherein the 2D displacement vectors are determined based on vertices included in one of the key models, and the optical flow vectors of the pixels are generated by calculating optical flows of the pixels based on pixels included in one of the image frames.
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Abstract
An apparatus and method for generating an animation of a virtual character using video data and a limited number of three-dimensional (3D) key models of a virtual character, are provided. The video data includes a sequence of two-dimensional image frames. The key models are blended together using the calculated weights, and a 3D facial expression most similar to the 2D facial expression included in each image frame may be generated. When the above operations are performed for input video data including a sequence of image frames, a facial animation, which makes facial expressions according to facial expressions included in the video data may be created.
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Citations
20 Claims
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1. An apparatus for generating facial animation, the apparatus comprising:
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a pre-processing unit for selecting an image frame having a facial region that is most similar to a facial region of one of a plurality of key models of facial characters, from a sequence of image frames, each image frame being divided into a plurality of facial regions; a facial animation generation unit for determining a blending weight for each selected facial region of the key models using the selected facial region and for synthesizing facial character shapes on a facial region-by-facial region basis using the determined blending weight for each facial region of each of the key models; and a display device for displaying facial animation, wherein the pre-processing unit compares directions of respective two-dimensional (2D) displacement vectors of vertices included in each key model with directions of respective optical flow vectors of pixels included in each image frame and calculates a similarity between the directions, wherein the 2D displacement vectors are determined based on vertices included in one of the key models, and the optical flow vectors of the pixels are generated by calculating optical flows of the pixels based on pixels included in one of the image frames. - View Dependent Claims (2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 11, 12, 19)
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10. An apparatus for generating facial animation, the apparatus comprising:
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a pre-processing unit for selecting an image frame having a facial region that is most similar to a facial region of one of a plurality of key models of facial characters, from a sequence of image frames, each image frame being divided into a plurality of facial regions; a facial animation generation unit for determining a blending weight for each selected facial region of the key models using the selected facial region and for synthesizing facial character shapes on a facial region-by-facial region basis using the determined blending weight for each facial region of each of the key models; and a display device for displaying facial animation, wherein the facial animation generation unit determines the blending weight for each facial region of each key model such that the determined blending weight is inversely proportional to a distance of a representative parameter value corresponding to each key model from the parameter of the image frame.
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13. A method of generating facial animation based on a video, the method comprising:
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selecting an image frame having a facial region that is most similar to a facial region of one of a plurality of key models of facial characters, from a sequence of image frames; determining a blending weight for each facial region of each of the key model using the selected image frame; generating facial animation by synthesizing facial characters on a facial region-by-facial region basis using the determined blending weight for each facial region of each key model; and displaying the facial animation on a display device, wherein each of the key models is divided into a plurality of facial regions, and each of the image frames is divided into a plurality of facial regions, wherein the selecting of the image frame having a facial region most similar to a facial region of one of a key model further comprises comparing directions of respective 2D displacement vectors of vertices included in each key model with directions of respective optical flow vectors of pixels included in each image frame and calculating a similarity between the directions, wherein the 2D displacement vectors are determined based on vertices included in one of the key models, and the optical flow vectors of the pixels are generated by calculating optical flows of the pixels based on pixels included in one of the image frames. - View Dependent Claims (14, 15, 16, 17, 18)
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20. An apparatus for generating facial animation, the apparatus comprising:
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a pre-processing unit for selecting an image frame having a facial region that is most similar to a facial region of one of a plurality of key models of facial characters, from a sequence of image frames, each image frame being divided into a plurality of facial regions; a facial animation generation unit for determining a blending weight for each selected facial region of the key models using the selected facial region and for synthesizing facial character shapes on a facial region-by-facial region basis using the determined blending weight for each facial region of each of the key models; and a display device for displaying facial animation, wherein a key model region divider may extract mass points of each of the key models when a change in length of a spring is greater than a predetermined threshold value compared with a reference key model, and may divide the extracted mass points into a plurality of groups according to coherence in motion.
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Specification