MoCap for Artists

10 Facial Motion Capture

The face is the only part of the human body where some voluntary muscles attach to other muscles instead of bones. Most of our facial muscles are small, thin, layered, and embedded in fatty tissue. Motion capture of facial expressions is almost exclusively done with optical systems due to the subtlety of the motion. Small markers of 2 or 3 mm diameters are pasted on a capture subject’s face with hypo-allergenic glue used for false eyelashes or wigs. If a high-end system has a sufficient number of high-resolution cameras, it can capture full-body motion and facial expressions simultaneously in a capture volume that is large enough to allow the subject to move around. However, with most optical systems, facial expressions ...