FACS at 40
Mike Seymour · 2019
Creating emotionally impactful characters has been one of the biggest challenges in computer graphics. Key to this has been understanding how faces express emotion. In 1978 research started in coding human expressions. The Facial Action Coding System (FACS) would become one of the cornerstones of facial animation of digital characters. Today FACS is recognized as the gold standard in scientific facial research and animation. Forty years on, we discuss the strengths and limitations of FACS, its relevance in the age of Machine Learning and what people are doing to improve upon FACS in animation.