Transferring Facial Expressions to Different Face Models

How to read this

Category

Method: facial rig and expression transfer across face models

Contributions

• A facial deformation system that lets artists manipulate a face like a puppet for easier character setup.
• Finding correspondence of a generic rig's main attributes and transferring them to different 3D face models.
• Automatic generation of an anatomy-based rig (muscles plus skeleton) so the same parameters produce unique expressions per model.

Context

Relates to deformation-transfer ideas, building on Sumner and Popovic's Deformation Transfer for Triangle Meshes to carry rig controls and anatomy from a generic face to target faces.Builds on: Deformation Transfer for Triangle Meshes

Correctness

Presented as a setup-acceleration system that reuses one rig across faces; the result quality depends on the quality of the established correspondence and how well the generic rig's anatomy adapts to differing topology and proportions, which a reader should treat as the main assumption.

Clarity

Accessible to a rigging/character-tech reader; a first pass conveys the create-once, transfer-to-many idea, a second pass for the correspondence and anatomy-adaptation steps.

How to read it

First pass for the pipeline and motivation; second pass on the correspondence method and anatomy transfer if you intend to evaluate it against other rig-retargeting work.