Automated acquisition of video textures acquired from a digital camera for mapping to audio-driven deformable objects

A method of generating a computer generated animation to provide a visual accompaniment to music, comprising:

• displaying an animation scene including a plurality of 3D objects;
• displaying an object selection screen for allowing a user to select one object currently displayed in said animation scene as a selected object;
• providing a video signal from a source external to the computer;
• displaying a video selection icon;
• displaying a face template having facial feature indications and oriented and scaled to match a target object included in the animation, with the feature indications corresponding to similarly oriented regions on the target object;
• orienting a video signal image so that an image of a face is aligned with the face template and features of the face are overlaid by feature indications of the templates;
• mapping features of the face aligned to feature indications of the template to corresponding regions of the target object;
• and
• deforming part of a surface of the target object onto which the features of the face are mapped, and wherein
• if the user clicks the video selection icon
• texture mapping the video signal onto the selected object in the animation scene so that a texture-mapped video signal is displayed on the surface of the selected object;
• altering an appearance of the texture-mapped video signal displayed on the surface of the selected object based on music events;
• detecting a selected event in the video signal being texture-mapped;
• wherein
• said act of detecting comprises detecting when a luminescence parameter of the video signal passes a threshold;
• and
• altering the appearance of the texture-mapped video when the selected event is detected.