Face expressions by simulating muscles under skin

[robagar]

Is SOFA a good choice for physically modelling face expressions?

The idea is to animate the movement by simulating the interaction of bones, muscles, fat and skin in much the same way as Weta Digital did for Avatar and other movies using their proprietary Tissue system (video on youtube).

I’m not so much interested movie-quality rendering, more the physical deformation of the face in response to muscle contractions. Is there a common way to model the way muscles change shape as they contract?

Any pointers to examples and/or parts of the SOFA codebase to look at would be much appreciated!

[Hugo]

Dear Rob,

Sorry for the delay.
Indeed, SOFA would be a good choice I think. A company in the SOFA community (Anatoscope) has expertise in this field. I would advise to contact them.

Best,

Hugo

[Fabien]

You should give a look at the plugin named Flexible. There are some materials for simulating musculotendon system (i.e. MuscleMaterialForceField and TendonMaterialForceField), in addition to hyperelastic materials.

[robagar]

Thanks guys!

What do the Flexible demos do? I have a nicely rendered steak, but it looks pretty inanimate…

[robagar]

Ah presumably because of this:

[ERROR] [RequiredPlugin] Plugin not found: "Flexible"

[Hugo]

Dear robagar,

Did you compile the Flexible plugin ?
(activate it in cmake-gui and recompile)

cheers,

Hugo

[Author]

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