Face poser: Interactive modeling of 3D facial expressions using facial priors

This article presents an intuitive and easy-to-use system for interactively posing 3D facial expressions. The user can model and edit facial expressions by drawing freeform strokes, by specifying distances between facial points, by incrementally editing curves on the face, or by directly dragging facial points in 2D screen space. Designing such an interface for 3D facial modeling and editing is challenging because many unnatural facial expressions might be consistent with the user's input. We formulate the problem in a maximum a posteriori framework by combining the user's input with priors embedded in a large set of facial expression data. Maximizing the posteriori allows us to generate an optimal and natural facial expression that achieves the goal specified by the user. We evaluate the performance of our system by conducting a thorough comparison of our method with alternative facial modeling techniques. To demonstrate the usability of our system, we also perform a user study of our system and compare with state-of-the-art facial expression modeling software (Poser 7).