This early attempt at computer-generated parametric facial animation, which was first uploaded to YouTube in 2010, is by acknowledged pioneer in the field Fred Parke,
Fred started out in the US military in the Sixties, developing weapons simulation software. For his Ph.D. in computer science at the University of Utah (1972-1974) he conducted his facial animation research with support from the US government Department of Defence’s Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA).
Fred’s wife Vicky was one of the models he used to produce “realistic” computer-generated half-tone animated sequences of a human face changing emotions. At the time, he determined that polygon skin containing approximately 300 polygons defined by about 400 vertices was enough to produce a realistic face. 3D data was obtained using pairs of photographs. The animation was achieved using a cosine interpretation scheme to fill in the intermediate frames between expressions.
Fred’s original research paper, entitled ‘Computer generated animation of human faces’ at the University of Utah’s digital library. After a long career in academia, interrupted by a spell at IBM, he is now a Professor of Facial Animation at Texas A&M University.
Who were Fred’s facial animation research peers in the early Seventies and are there examples of their work you can share with us?
Source: Creative Bloq