TY - GEN
T1 - The components of conversational facial expressions
AU - Cunningham, Douglas W.
AU - Kleiner, Mario
AU - Bulthoff, Heinrich
AU - Wallraven, Christian
PY - 2004
Y1 - 2004
N2 - Conversing with others is one of the most central of human behaviours. In any conversation, humans use facial motion to help modify what is said, to control the flow of a dialog, or to convey complex intentions without saying a word. Here, we employ a custom, image-based, stereo motion-tracking algorithm to track and selectively "freeze" portions of an actor or actress's face in video recordings in order to determine the necessary and sufficient facial motions for nine conversational expressions. The results show that most expressions rely primarily on a single facial area to convey meaning, with different expressions using different facial areas. The results also show that the combination of rigid head, eye, eyebrow, and mouth motion is sufficient to produce versions of these expressions that are as easy to recognize as the original recordings. Finally, the results show that the manipulation technique introduced few perceptible artifacts into the altered video sequences. The use of advanced computer graphics techniques provided a means to systematically examine real facial expressions. This provides not only fundamental insights into human perception and cognition, but also yields the basis for a systematic description of what needs to be animated in order to produce realistic, recognizable facial expressions.
AB - Conversing with others is one of the most central of human behaviours. In any conversation, humans use facial motion to help modify what is said, to control the flow of a dialog, or to convey complex intentions without saying a word. Here, we employ a custom, image-based, stereo motion-tracking algorithm to track and selectively "freeze" portions of an actor or actress's face in video recordings in order to determine the necessary and sufficient facial motions for nine conversational expressions. The results show that most expressions rely primarily on a single facial area to convey meaning, with different expressions using different facial areas. The results also show that the combination of rigid head, eye, eyebrow, and mouth motion is sufficient to produce versions of these expressions that are as easy to recognize as the original recordings. Finally, the results show that the manipulation technique introduced few perceptible artifacts into the altered video sequences. The use of advanced computer graphics techniques provided a means to systematically examine real facial expressions. This provides not only fundamental insights into human perception and cognition, but also yields the basis for a systematic description of what needs to be animated in order to produce realistic, recognizable facial expressions.
KW - Animation
KW - Applied perception
KW - Computer graphics
KW - Facial expressions
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=14344249524&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1145/1012551.1012578
DO - 10.1145/1012551.1012578
M3 - Conference contribution
AN - SCOPUS:14344249524
SN - 1581139144
SN - 9781581139143
T3 - Proceedings - 1st Symposium on Applied Perception in Graphics and Visualization, APGV 2004
SP - 143
EP - 149
BT - Proceedings - 1st Symposium on Applied Perception in Graphics and Visualization, APGV 2004
PB - Association for Computing Machinery
T2 - Proceedings - 1st Symposium on Applied Perception in Graphics and Visualization, APGV 2004
Y2 - 7 August 2004 through 8 August 2004
ER -