Sung Ho Kim , Moon Ryul Jung

The KIPS Transactions:PartA, Vol. 11, No. 4, pp. 277-284, Aug. 2004
10.3745/KIPSTA.2004.11.4.277,   PDF Download:

Abstract

This paper presents a facial expression control method of 3D avatar that enables the user to select a sequence of facial frames from the facial expression space, whose level of details the user can select hierarchically. Our system creates the facial expression space from about 2,400 captured facial frames. But because there are too many facial expressions to select from, the user faces difficulty in navigating the space. So, we visualize the space hierarchically. To partition the space into a hierarchy of subspaces, we use fuzzy clustering. In the beginning, the system creates about 11 clusters from the space of 2,400 facial expressions. The cluster centers are displayed on 2D screen and are used as candidate key frames for key frame animation. When the user zooms in (zoom is discrete), it means that the user wants to see more details. So, the system creates more clusters for the new level of zoom-in. Every time the level of zoom-in increases, the system doubles the number of clusters. The user selects new key frames along the navigation path of the previous level. At the maximum zoom-in, the user completes facial expression control specification. At any moment, the user can go back to previous level by zooming out, and update the navigation path. We let users use the system to control facial expression of 3D avatar, and evaluate the system based on the results.

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