BU Research Blog

Speaker: Professor Andres Newball
Pontificia Universidad Javeriana, Cali, Colombia
Date: Thursday 30th October 2014   
Time: 15.00-16.00pm
Venue: P335

Abstract: Several human facial animation models have been developed in the last 30 years. In contrast, less attention has been given to animal facial models. Animal facial anatomical features are usually humanised, oversimplified, cartoonised or ignored. With Londra, our dog facial animation model, we successfully synthesised dog facial expressions such as anger, affection, attention, fear, happiness, yawning and smelling without displaying anthropomorphic features. A preliminary validation suggested that most expressions were recognised consistently. Our contributions include: a simplified model inspired by anatomy; a new bottom up form of the layered approach for the bone, muscle, complementary, skin and fur layers; a Dog Facial Action Coding System to synthesise the expressions; and the Tabulated Sphere Subsets to provide a fast way to approximate collisions between objects with constrained motion. This project was funded by the Pontificia Universidad Javeriana, Cali; The University of Otago and Colfuturo and had the collaboration from the Manchester Metropolitan University.