ABSTRACT
Virtual characters in games are becoming more and more realistic, with recent advances, for instance, in the techniques of skin rendering [d’Eon and Luebke 07, Hable et al. 09, Jimenez and Gutierrez 10] or behavior-based animation.1 To avoid lifeless representations and to make the action more engaging, increasingly sophisticated algorithms are being devised that capture subtle aspects of the appearance and motion of these characters. Unfortunately, facial animation and the emotional aspect of the interaction have not been traditionally pursued with the same intensity. We believe this is an important aspect missing in games, especially given the current trend toward story-driven AAA games and their movie-like, real-time cut scenes.
