FaceFactory

1
FaceFactory

• MPEG-4 Compliant 2.5D Face Builder
• Tonny Wijaya
• Supervisor Andrew Marriott

2
Introduction

• Talking Heads, applications
• HCI
• Avatars
• Virtual salesperson
• Many more!
• Question
• How do we create visually different talking
  heads?

3
MPEG-4 Standard
BACKGROUND

• International standard (ISO) to define multimedia
  communication
• Part of the standard defines parameterized facial
  animation at very low bit rate
• Use FDP and FAP

FDPs and FAPs (Ostermann, 2002)
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Photorealistic
BACKGROUND

• Bernhard Tschirren (2000) made photo-texturing on
  3D talking head
• Allows users to change the look of a 3D talking
  head
• Tedious mapping of the FDPs!

Photorealistic Talking Head (Tschirren, 2000)
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The MetaFace Framework
BACKGROUND

• A framework to add anthropomorphic metaphors to
  web pages
• The metaphors are in the form of 2.5D MPEG-4
  compliant Talking Heads
• These are called embodiments (Beard 2004)

MetaFace application with SpikyBoy (Beard, 2004)
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Significance of 2D
BACKGROUND

• Many company logos and mascots are in the form of
  2D cartoon
• Metaface aims to use these cartoon-like mascots
  to utilize their goodwill
• 3D model inhibit believability
• Web based applet and low-powered devices may not
  yet be suitable to do 3D animated talking head

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Embodiment Code
BACKGROUND

• These are the interface of a MetaFace compliant
  embodiment
• Flexible, but inhibit reuse
• Problem Needs an effective way to create new
  face quickly

• MPEG4Face interface
• public abstract class MPEG4Face
• //constructor for initialization
• public MPEG4Face()
• //animate whole face
• public abstract void animateFace (FAPData
  frame)
• //draw whole face
• public abstract void drawFace (Graphics2D g2d,
  int width, int height)

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FaceGUI
BACKGROUND

• Aimed to create 2.5D face
• Result Able to draw face with curves and polygon
• Able to save face into an XML file
• Faces are not yet capable of being animated

FaceGUI (McCabe-Dansted 2001)
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Existing System
BACKGROUND

• Chartoon is a complete 2D animation system
• Face components that allow quick assembly of face
• Proprietary animation

Chartoon (Ruttkay, 2000)
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Direct Manipulation
BACKGROUND

• User interface paradigm
• Generalized WIMP (Windows, Icon, Mouse, Pointer)
• Historically, coined by Shneidermann (1983)
• Continuous visual representation of the object
• Command through labeled buttons instead of
  command line syntax
• Rapid incremental reversible actions

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GUI Building
SOLUTION

• GUI components (widgets) are interactively
  composed to create windows and dialog boxes
  (direct manipulation)
• Problems are similar to constructing new
  embodiments
• Do the same for face components!
• Reduces programming burden
• Reduces polishing burden
• Reduces artistic burden

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Face Factory
SOLUTION
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Face Factory
SOLUTION

• MetaFace Library
• Supporting Libraries from the MetaFace framework
• MetaFace Application
• New embodiments should be pluggable to existing
  applications
• User Interface
• Direct manipulation (Drag and drop)
• Compose new embodiments interactively
• Component Library
• Animated facial components (e.g. eyes, eyebrows)
• Component reuse!
• Code Generator
• Automatically generate MetaFace compatible code

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Hypotheses
METHODOLOGY

• Objective Build a direct manipulation system to
  test the following hypotheses
• Face Factory can be constructed and capable of
  composing new 2D MPEG-4 compliant faces through
  its component library
• Face Factory is effective for its purpose
• The automatically generated embodiments are as
  good as Spiky Boy

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Methodology
METHODOLOGY

• Design and Demonstration
• Design and implement the system
• Implementation
• Informal evaluation
• Evaluation
• Questionnaire

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Summary

• MPEG-4 Facial Animation standard
• 2D versus 3D
• GUI builder works for GUI
• At the end, well have Face Factory
• An MPEG-4 compliant cartoon face constructor
• An evaluation of its effectiveness

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Questions?
Chartoon (Ruttkay, 2002)
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References

• Beard, S 2004, MetaFace A Virtual Face Framework
  and Metaphor, PhD., Curtin University of
  Technology.
• Ostermann, J. (2002). Face Animation in MPEG-4.
  MPEG-4 Facial Animation - The standard,
  implementations and applications. I. Pandzic and
  R. Forchheimer. London, John Wiley 17-55.
• Ruttkay, Z. and H. Noot (2002). Cartoon Talking
  Heads. 1st Hungarian Computer Graphics
  Conference, Budapest.
• Tschirren, B 2000, Realism and Believability in
  MPEG-4 Facial Models, Honours Thesis, Curtin
  University of Technology.