Interactive composition of 3D faces for virtual characters

Abstract

As many 3D on-line games appear, there is an increased need for simple and efficient techniques to create many new faces. This paper presents a new algorithm to composite 3D faces for game characters. No remeshing or segmentation of 3D models is required in our method. Our algorithm is composed of four simple steps: building a one-to-one geometric correspondence between models, local resampling, computing relative geometry, and blending geometry. Our new algorithm can provide various composite operations such as replacement, interpolation, or randomization by assigning different weights for geometry blending. The space and time complexity of our algorithm is linear to the combined number of vertices of input meshes which means it is efficient enough for interactive operation. Our new method is expected to easily and quickly give a unique appearance to 3D game characters or anonymous crowds. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2007.