Computer facial animation

Due to its subject and output type, it is also related to many other scientific and artistic fields from psychology to traditional animation.

Although development of computer graphics methods for facial animation started in the early-1970s, major achievements in this field are more recent and happened since the late 1980s.

With the recent advancements in computational power in personal and mobile devices, facial animation has transitioned from appearing in pre-rendered content to being created at runtime.

After some older investigations, for example by John Bulwer in the late 1640s, Charles Darwin's book The Expression of the Emotions in Men and Animals can be considered a major departure for modern research in behavioural biology.

Originally developed by Carl-Herman Hjortsjö[1] in the 1960s and updated by Ekman and Friesen in 1978, FACS defines 46 basic facial Action Units (AUs).

This marked the first time computer facial expression and speech animation were a fundamental part of telling the story.

Casper (1995), a milestone in this decade, was the first movie in which a lead actor was produced exclusively using digital facial animation.

Another milestone in facial animation was reached by The Lord of the Rings, where a character specific shape base system was developed.

Due to the popularity and effectiveness of XML as a data representation mechanism, most face animation languages are XML-based.

[5] FML supports MPEG-4 Face Animation Parameters (FAPS), decision-making and dynamic event handling, and typical programming constructs such as loops.