BlendForces: A Dynamic Framework for Facial Animation

Abstract In this paper we present a new paradigm for the generation and retargeting of facial animation. Like a vast majority of the approaches that have adressed these topics, our formalism is built on blendshapes. However, where prior works have generally encoded facial geometry using a low dimensional basis of these blendshapes, we propose to encode facial dynamics by looking at blendshapes as a basis of forces rather than a basis of shapes . We develop this idea into a dynamic model that naturally combines the blendshapes paradigm with physics‐based techniques for the simulation of deforming meshes. Because it escapes the linear span of the shape basis through time‐integration and physics‐inspired simulation, this approach has a wider expressive range than previous blendshape‐based methods. Its inherent physically‐based formulation also enables the simulation of more advanced physical interactions, such as collision responses on lip contacts.