A virtual sculpture based morphable face model

Exemplar virtual three-dimensional sculptures collected from sixteen artists are used to develop a multidimensional space to describe facial shape, which is then used as a mechanism for modeling new faces. This is accomplished through identifying and varying derived principal components of the multi-dimensional space. The relationships between these principal components and their effects on new faces are explored through the creation of new virtual faces using a graphical user interface. These new virtual face sculptures are then modified by facial feature, gender, and expression using a feature-based transformation interface based on difference vectors. Finally, animations are created to illustrate the results of these approaches. Facial mesh transformations based on principal components does not give direct predictable control for modifying specific facial features. However, it does provide interesting design choices for artists, and general patterns of the data variance were obtained. The feature-based transformations were successful in further modifying created faces.