why using a neutral 3d face model

[cryforyou]

why not just use the 68 landmarks of real face from camera and using Delaunay to form the face mesh to draw, and using the input face image's 68 landmarks as texture coord ?

[MarekKowalski]

Hi,

The use of a 3D model makes the effect more "realistic" thanks to self occlusions caused by the 3D model. If you only used a Delaunay triangulation to warp the textures, the face would likely look "off" when the subject's head pose was non-frontal.

Still, I encourage you to give it a try and let us know how it went, the modifications to the code would not be significant and a comparison would definitely be interesting.

Best regards,

Marek