Easy acquisition and real‐time animation of facial wrinkles

Facial animation details like wrinkles or bulges are very useful for the analysis and the interpretation of facial emotions and expressions. However, outfitting a virtual face with expression details for real‐time applications is a difficult task. In this paper, we propose a mono‐camera acquisition technique of facial animation details and a technique which add a wrinkle map layer (fine‐scale animation) to a skinning layer (large‐scale animation) for real‐time rendering of a virtual 3D face. The acquisition is based on ratio image computed from two pictures of a same face, with and without expression. The real‐time dynamic wrinkles technique is based on a small set of reference poses. These two methods offer an easy and low‐cost way to capture facial animation details and use it for real‐time facial animation. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.