Patent ID: 7567251

Claim:
A method for creating facial animation, the method comprising: determining a face mesh sequence; selecting a face mesh in the face mesh sequence, the face mesh sequence including the face mesh having a first expression and subsequent face meshes including one or more expression changes from the first expression; fitting the face mesh of the face mesh sequence to a face image based on features of the face image and features of the face mesh; determining displacement values for vertices of the face mesh in the fitting for the face mesh, the displacement values used to deform the face mesh to fit the face image based on the features of the face image and the features of the face mesh; projecting the face image onto the face mesh as texture based on the fitting; adding the displacement values to vertices in subsequent face meshes in the face mesh sequence; projecting the face image on the subsequent face meshes, wherein the face image includes a first image expression that is projected onto the face mesh with the first expression and subsequent face meshes with the one or more expression changes, the first image expression being different from the one or more expression changes on the subsequent face meshes; and playing, using a computing device, the face mesh sequence to create facial animation for the face image that shows the first expression in the face mesh and the one or more expression changes in the subsequent face meshes using the same face image with the first image expression, the facial animation created using the face image used to fit the face mesh, wherein the subsequent face meshes are deformed using the displacement values to fit the face image.