Physics-Based Simulation of Contact-Induced Facial Wrinkling
This work addresses the challenging problem of realistic facial skin wrinkling simulation for computer graphics and animation, but the results are qualitative and incremental over existing physics-based approaches.
The paper presents a finite element framework for simulating contact-induced facial wrinkling, modeling skin as a viscoelastic material with heterogeneous attachments via a continuum-based formulation of skin ligaments. The method produces temporally coherent and visually realistic wrinkle patterns, validated through comparisons with real-world footage.
Facial skin dynamics are inherently challenging to simulate due to a combination of geometric, material, and anatomical complexities. Human skin is a nonlinear layered material with spatially heterogeneous attachments to the underlying tissues. During contact events, localized compression and shear induce mechanical instabilities, leading to fine-scale wrinkling patterns governed by a delicate interplay of geometry, boundary conditions, and through-the-thickness stresses. We present a finite element framework to simulate contact-induced wrinkling of facial skin. We model skin as a viscoelastic material with time-dependent relaxation that governs the rate, persistence, and damping of wrinkle formation. We employ high-order prismatic solid-shell elements to resolve through-thickness stresses and high-frequency deformation modes. Central to our approach, we introduce a continuum-based formulation of skin ligaments to model heterogeneous skin attachments and provide anatomically inspired mobility constraints. These skin ligaments control the formation and appearance of facial wrinkles by modulating their amplitude, wavelength, and spatial distribution. We evaluate our method on a set of synthetic examples and compare simulations with real-world footage. These results demonstrate that our skin model produces temporally coherent and visually realistic wrinkle patterns during transient contact.