Tongue position tracking for facial animation

A system comprising:

• a camera;
• a display;
• and
• computing hardware configured to:
• receive, from the camera, a plurality of images representing a portion of a face containing a mouth, wherein one or more images of the plurality of images depict a tongue extended out of the mouth;
• determine, based on the plurality of images, an amount of time for which the tongue has been extended out of the mouth;
• determine, based on the amount of time for which the tongue has been extended out of the mouth, a tongue length for a digital representation of the tongue, wherein the digital representation of the tongue forms part of a digital representation of the face, and wherein the tongue length is proportional to the amount of time;
• adjust the digital representation of the face to have the digital representation of the tongue extend out of the mouth with the determined tongue length;
• and
• provide instructions to display, on the display, the digital representation of the face adjusted to have the digital representation of the tongue extend out of the mouth with the determined tongue length.

A non-transitory computer-readable storage medium having stored thereon instructions that, when executed by a computing device, cause the computing device to perform operations comprising:

• receiving, from a camera, a plurality of images representing a portion of a face containing a mouth, wherein one or more images of the plurality of images depict a tongue extended out of the mouth;
• determining, based on the plurality of images, an amount of time for which the tongue has been extended out of the mouth;
• determining, based on the amount of time for which the tongue has been extended out of the mouth, a tongue length for a digital representation of the tongue, wherein the digital representation of the tongue forms part of a digital representation of the face, and wherein the tongue length is proportional to the amount of time;
• adjusting the digital representation of the face to have the digital representation of the tongue extend out of the mouth with the determined tongue length;
• and
• providing instructions to display the digital representation of the face adjusted to have the digital representation of the tongue extend out of the mouth with the determined tongue length.