Fifteen years ago, while designing the Erasmatron, I built a Face Editor that permitted authors to create character faces. The central feature of this editor was its ability to put any static facial expression onto the face of any character. We had a library of ~100 facial expressions. It was really great for 1997, but is a 2D system, not 3D, and the results are nowhere near as photo-realistic as modern stuff. On the other hand, they are STILL more emotionally expressive than anything I've seen in commercial products.
It occurs to me that this technology might be of some value to indie developers. The original code is in C++ for the Mac. I suggest that it would be possible to rewrite this code as a library for use by indie developers. I can't do that work myself, but I'd be willing to make the source code available for a team willing to do the task.
You can see a brief characterization of the system here:
http://www.erasmatazz.com/library/interactive-storytelling/erasmatron-faces.html
Is anybody interested in building a second generation of this technology?