Real-Time 2.5D Facial Cartoon Animation Based on Pose and Expression Estimation

In this paper, a real-time facial animation system is presented, that captures live facial expressions and poses from user, and uses them to animate a synthetic 2.5D cartoon character (Avatar) in real-time. Compared to existing 3D Avatar systems, the 2.5D cartoon models are easier to create than full 3D model, and the cartoon-style drawings are more popular among young people. Our system requires only an ordinary PC camera, and the initialization is fully automatic. We established a mapping from real-time facial motion to the atomic motion parameters of the cartoon model by pose and expression estimation. The animation is driven by these parameters in the way of blend shape interpolation.