Real-Time Crying Simulation

Displaying facial motions such as crying or laughing is difficult to achieve in real-time simulations and games. Not only because of the complicated simulation of the physical characteristics such as muscle motions or fluid simulations, but also because one needs to know how to control these motions on a higher level. In this paper, we propose a method that uses the MPEG-4 Facial Animation standard to control a realistic crying face in real-time. The tear simulation is based on the Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics technique, which we optimized for real-time tear generation and control. Through simple parameters, a wide range of expressions and tears can be generated on the fly. Additionally, our method works independently of the graphics and physics engines that are used.