Animating Facial Features & Expressions
The challenges of modeling and animating realistic faces and emotions with computer software are confronted and easily worked through inAnimating Facial Features & Expressions. If you have any interest in computer-based character animation, this book will be a valuable addition to your reference shelf. The book starts with an exploration of the anatomy of the head, including underlying facial muscles and proportions; continues with examples of displaying different emotions; and ends with a series of appendices that list different expressions and emotions for human faces, cartoon faces, and nonhuman (monster) faces.Of all the material, the most important section discusses speech/lip sync animation. Imagine the difficulties not only in creating a realistic sculpture but animating it as well. While you will encounter the normal problems of modeling everything within proper proportions, you must also constantly alter the facial features and mouth shapes with very specific timing to achieve realistic-looking movement. If either the timing or proportions stray from the given norm, the illusion is shattered.The author starts with an explanation of phonemes (defined as "the sounds we hear in speech patterns"), how they sound, and how they look (in terms of mouth/lips/tongue shapes). A timing chart is then created, also known as reading a sound track, where the specific frame numbers are noted for each phoneme. With this in hand, it then becomes a simple matter of producing the proper shapes at the proper times to create a talking character.Good facial expression and lip-sync animation remain anything but "a simple matter." A practiced ear is required for reading a soundtrack, and a trained eye for creating the facial features that match those shapes. However, this book is an excellent way to start tackling the problems involved.One more note: the book is completely nonsoftware-specific, to the point where not one software package is mentioned. This may keep the book generic and focused on important issues, but it also places the burden of properly modeling and manipulating any faces or heads (not to mention software) in the hands of the reader. If you are new to 3D character animation, you might want to better learn the features of the software application you will be using before tackling the complexities of facial animation.--Mike Caputo