A Dense Statistical Model of Facial Soft Tissue Thickness

Abstract

Ambient intelligence become more and more ubiquitous and help people achieving a more natural interaction with their electronically enhanced environment. One vital natural interface between humans and ambient intelligence are embodied conversational agents. Thereby, the acceptance of these virtual characters is all the greater, the more natural they look and behave. Since humans pay particular attention to the face, a natural-looking animation of the face is very important. In this paper we present a dense statistical model of facial soft tissue thickness that can be used to build accurate physics-based facial animations. The presented model not only can help to generate more natural facial animations of virtual characters but also can be used in other research domains such as forensic anthropology or medicine. Especially in the field of dentistry and orthodontics in particularly younger people and children are increasingly examined using X-ray technology. Thereby more and more volumetric images are generated, which further increase cost as well as the induced radiation dose. Here, for example, our statistical model can provide the basis for a new volumetric reconstruction process of a human’s facial bones in a cost-effective manner and with low radiation exposure.