NCCA Animation Archive

Human Facial Anatomy and Expressions, and how they can be Realistically Represented using Computer Graphics

Facial animation is the most important part of character animation, and realistic and natural expression of emotions is one of the most important parts of animating a believable character. This, however, is also one of the most challenging aspects of animating a character. The human face is one of the most interesting and intricate parts of the human body. We can detect even the subtlest change of expression within the face, and its familiarity allows us to recognise one face out of a sea of hundreds that we come into contact with every day. In order to successfully animate facial expressions and emotion, a thorough understanding of the human facial muscular structure and how expressions are formed is necessary.

Random Face Generation and the Application of Fuzzy Logic

This paper describes a system that automatically generates multiple variations of a piece of 3D facial geometry. The position of a facial feature drives the position of another feature using a set of rules obtained through observed associations between features on a human face. The system allows for a user to modify features on a face manually. The fundamentals and power of Fuzzy Logic is explored in depth, and the potential use of this method of logic inside the system is hypothesised. It is proposed that realistic variations of a face can be generated automatically by the system, and that the need for modelling multiple faces in the 3D environment could become unnecessary by the use of this method of generation.