MPEG-4 compliant reproduction of face animation created in Maya

This paper presents a method for extracting facial information encoded in MPEG-4 format from an animated face model in Maya. The method generates the appropriate data, as specified in the MPEG-4 standard, such as the Face Definition Parameters (FDPs), the Face Animation Parameters (FAPs) and the Facial Animation Table (FAT). The described procedure was implemented as a plug-in for Maya, which requires as inputs only the animated face model and the correspondence between its vertices and the Face Definition Parameters. The extracted data were tested on a publicly available FAP-player in order to demonstrate the faithful reproduction of the face animation originally created with the high-end 3D graphics modeller. The capabilities of the publicly available FAP player have also been augmented in order to enable loading any proprietary face model and its corresponding Facial Animation Table.