FACSHuman, a software program for creating experimental material by modeling 3D facial expressions.

This paper presents the FACSHuman software program, a tool for creating facial expression materials (pictures and videos) based on the Facial Action Coding System (FACS) developed by Ekman et al. (2002). FACSHuman allows almost all the Action Units (AUs) described in the FACS Manual to be manipulated through a three-dimensional modeling software interface. Four experiments were conducted to evaluate facial expressions of emotion generated by the software and their theoretical efficiency regarding the FACS. The first study (a categorization task of facial emotions such as happiness, anger, etc.) showed that 85% of generated pictures of emotional expressions were correctly categorized. The second study showed that only 82% of the most-used AUs were correctly matched. In the third experiment, two independent FACS coders rated 47 AUs generated by FACSHuman using the standard methodology used in this kind of task (AU identification). Results showed good-to-excellent codification rates (64% and 85%). In the last experiment, 54 combinations of AU were evaluated by the same FACS coders. Results showed good-to-excellent codification rates (68-82%). Results suggested that FACSHuman could be used as experimental material for research into nonverbal communication and emotional expression.