Face2face Animation’s Eric Petajan to Speak at L.A. Siggraph Chapter

Session to be Held at UCLA’s Design/Media Arts Building onTuesday, December 10; Representatives from Sony Imageworks and DigitalElite to Join Petajan

SUMMIT, N.J.--Eric Petajan, the chief scientist and founder offace2face animation, inc., the premier developer of facial animationsoftware and an emerging producer of animated content, will present thelatest in facial animation techniques as part of the L.A.SIGGRAPH’s “Innovations in Facial Animation” session,to be held on Tuesday, December 10, from 7:30-9:30 pm at the new UCLADesign/Media Arts Building at 11000 Kinross Avenue, Room 104.

In addition to Petajan, the event will feature other leading figuresin the field of facial animation, including Sony PicturesImageworks’ Mark Sagar and Digital Elite’s Dr. BarnabasTakacs, who will present the latest innovations in facial animationdesign for film, television, and electronic gaming applications.

Petajan has been a major force in MPEG-4-based facial animation,having helped shape the standard’s rules for facial animation aschairman of the MPEG-4 Face and Body Animation group.

“The Los Angeles chapter of SIGGRAPH represents the core ofthe entertainment industry’s innovation engine for animation, andI’m pleased to be able to participate in such an illustriousshowcase,” said Petajan. “face2face, together with ourcolleagues in the industry, are pushing toward more realistic,life-life 3D animated characters that will transform the animationexperience as we know it today.”

face2face recently won Computer Graphics World’s 2002Innovation Award for its latest facial motion capture system, face2faceAlterEgo. AlterEgo is advanced video analysis software thatautomatically converts ordinary digital video into animation motioninstructions, or Facial Animation Parameter (FAP) data, as specified bythe MPEG-4 standard.

The AlterEgo system enables animators to create high-quality facialcontent at far lower costs, and in much faster time frames, thanprevious solutions. Unlike other motion capture technologies,face2face’s approach relies on sophisticated video analysis,which renders markers, special equipment, or phoneme recognitionsoftware unnecessary.

FAPs, as specified by the MPEG-4 standard, are transferred to anyappropriately prepared computer graphics face model to convey facialexpressions, gaze and lip movements and head motion information. Thisprocess enables automatic capture of speech or singing, in anylanguage, as well as the complete range of human emotion.face2face’s technology is being adopted by film and televisionanimators, game developers, and Web content producers for advertising,and corporate communications applications.

face2face’s authoring technology enables the creation oflightweight face models that can be animated automatically from regulardigital video capture, and created semi-automatically from a singlestill image of a face. This lightweight face model is particularlyuseful in wireless and other low-bandwidth applications. The face2faceplayer, the industry’s first wireless MPEG-4 player, which wasintroduced in July, 2002, enables a typical “announcer”stream of a face, including background images and audio, to be carriedover a connection as low as 14.4 kilobits per second (kb/s).

About Eric Petajan

Prior to forming face2face, Petajan was a Bell Labs researcher wherehe developed facial motion capture, HD video coding, and interactivegraphics systems. Starting in 1989, Petajan was a leader in thedevelopment of digital HDTV technology standards, which led to the HDTVGrand Alliance, the foundation of today’s U.S. digital televisionstandard. He received a PhD in electrical engineering in 1984 and an MSin Physics from the University of Illinois where he built the firstautomatic lip-reading system. Petajan is also associate editor of theIEEE Transactions on Circuits and Systems for Video Technology.

About face2face animation

face2face animation, inc., based in Summit, New Jersey, is thepremier provider of facial motion capture and performance animation forthe production of content for television, film, Internet, gaming, andwireless platforms. face2face’s technology enables life-like lipsynch and facial movements for characters that are createdautomatically from any digital video source.

This cost-efficient approach enables the production of high-qualityfacial animation without specialized modeling software or markers.face2face produces specialized face and body animation content forelectronic games, television, advertising, corporate communications,training, and both wired and wireless Internet. The company was foundedin 2000, as a Lucent Technologies (NYSE: LU) venture, capitalizing oncore technologies that were developed by Eric Petajan at Bell Labs. Formore information, visit the Web site at www.f2fanimation.com.