Facial Action Coding System Software

Orchestrate modules to enable OS and software independent interactive facial animation.

The FACS and Paul Ekman – “The Facial Action Coding System (FACS) is a tool for measuring facial expressions. It is an anatomical system for describing all observable facial movement. It breaks down facial expressions into individual components of muscle movement. Facial Action Coding System is a tool that allows the operator to recognize microexpressions as they occur on his interlocutor. No matter where you live or if you have never left where you have lived we as humans understand emotions very similarly. Thanks to Paul Ekman we have a better understanding. We analyzed the facial expression using facial action coding system (FACS) and examined the muscle mass and characteristics of the facial expression muscles using multi‐detector row computed tomography (MDCT) and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). Moreover, the relation between these was statistically evaluated.

FACSvatar is a combination of the terms FACS and Avatar.FACS stands for Facial Action Coding System and is a way to describe a person’s facial expressionin terms of muscle contraction and relaxation.A single muscle group is called an Action Unit (AU) and either has a value between 0-5 or 0-1 (FACSvatar).It is a system found by Paul Ekman and is often used in affective research.Since FACS describes facial configurations, it is not only useful for affective analysis,but also for animation.More information about FACS can be found here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facial_Action_Coding_System

FACSvatar is a modular framework that connects different software over ZeroMQ to enable boththe animation and analysis of AUs.At present, a standard workflow is to use a modified OpenFace.(FACS input) that is transported and manipulated (smoothed) through FACSvatar and then forwarded toeither Unity3D (real-time) or Blender (high-quality) animation.

Links¶

Ekman facial action coding system

Facial Action Coding System Manual

Facial
  • GitHub code and a longer explanation of FACSvatar’s usefulness can be found at:https://github.com/NumesSanguis/FACSvatar
  • Homepage: https://surafusoft.eu/facsvatar/
  • Discussion of FACSvatar on reddit (for code problems, use GitHub issue tracker):https://www.reddit.com/r/FACSvatar/

Facial Action Coding System Software Download

Contents:

Ekman Facial Action Coding System

  • Quickstart
  • Default set-up
  • First run
  • Docker
  • Deep learning setup