Realistic 3D facial animation in virtual space teleconferencing

Our work on color texture synthesis, real-time animation of facial wrinkles and 3D shape deformation enhances realism with minimal computational expense and gives a total control of the wrinkling process during facial expressions within the Virtual Space Teleconferencing system. Facial wrinkles are synthesized on a scanned facial texture using the bump mapping technique by detecting wrinkles in a real facial image by a noise-removing process and a gradient extraction operation. In relation with the detected facial expression on the face, wrinkles are realistically animated by employing hardware blending. Simultaneously, the wireframe displacement coupled with the expression of the human face according to predefined motion rules improves the realism of 3D human figure models in a virtual space teleconferencing system.