The MPEG-4 Face and Body Animation (FBA) specifications aims at standardizing an interchange format for specifying virtual face and body modeling and related animation parameters. The scene graph concept, the FBA nodes, semantics and representation of the animation parameters as well as compression and streaming capabilities are successively addressed. The compatibility between virtual character animation techniques and MPEG-4 FBA is analyzed in terms of modeling, deformation behavior and animation capabilities.
Marius Preda, Françoise J. Prêteux