Getting facial features and gestures in 3D

In the study of face perception and face animation, there is a growing interest in using 3-D data. The advent of dedicated laser scanners has proved instrumental in this regard. The availability of 3D face models makes it easier to change viewpoints and illumination conditions in perception experiments or to build animated likenesses in graphics. Here we propose to go one step further and also capture face dynamics (visemes, epressions) in 3-D. To that end, an active 3-D acquisition system is proposed, that yields 3-D, textured snapshots from a single image. By the fact that data are captured from a single shot, the face may move during the operation. Alternatively, images can be taken at video rate and for each frame a 3-D reconstruction (still textured if required) can be made. Such 3-D movies can then be used to analyse facial expressions in 3-D, through the tracking of points or features on the face. Preliminary experiments in that direction are presented. The reported work is part of an effort to model facial expressions without taking recourse to the modeling of the underlying physiology.