Patent ID: 7050655

Claim:
A method for generating a three-dimensional animated video head, comprising steps for: capturing a sequence of two-dimensional video image frames of the face of an actor; for each two-dimensional video image frame: sensing the locations of the actor's facial features at predetermined node locations in the two-dimensional video image frame, wherein each node location is associated with a particular facial feature; driving control points on a three-dimensional head mesh based on the sensed node locations in the two-dimensional video image frame to generate a shaped three-dimensional head mesh; warping the two-dimensional video image frame used to generate the sensed node locations for projection onto the shaped head mesh; and texture mapping the warped two-dimensional video image frame onto the shaped head mesh to generate a three-dimensional frame head associated with the respective two-dimensional video image frame; and animating the three-dimensional video head by displaying a sequence of the three-dimensional frame heads associated with the sequence of two-dimensional video image frames.