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From: turk@media-lab.media.mit.edu (Matthew Turk)
Newsgroups: comp.graphics
Subject: Re: A thought on facial representations
Message-ID: <3932@media-lab.MEDIA.MIT.EDU>
Date: 6 Nov 90 21:36:34 GMT
References: <90Nov3.172800est.19242@me.utoronto.ca>
Sender: turk@media-lab.MEDIA.MIT.EDU
Reply-To: turk@media-lab.media.mit.edu
Organization: MIT Media Lab
Lines: 18
In-reply-to: sun@me.utoronto.ca's message of 3 Nov 90 22:28:15 GMT

>  .... I cannot see any immediate practical 
>  applications in the above (maybe let plastic surgens preview their 
>  patient's final outlook, facial animation and making molds of faces like
>  in Mission Possible). ....

There are a number of immediate practical applications of rendering
and animating faces.  One interesting application is close to what you
mentioned -- surgeons using a 3D graphics system before (to plan) and
during (to help in the surgery) craniofacial surgery.  Model-based
coding is another area of active research which addresses facial
animation -- on one end, the analysis stage, parameters describing the
face in view are calculated -- on the other end, the synthesis stage,
the face is reconstructed and animated for the viewer.  The
interesting applications of this are not just in reducing bandwidth,
but in ways you can manipulate the data at the recieving end.

	Matthew Turk
	MIT Media Lab			turk@media-lab.media.mit.edu