1. A system for animating a face, comprising: a facial reconstruction arrangement for acquiring a base surface model representing a three-dimensional shape of a subject's face, and for acquiring a set of displacement fields representing motion patterns of the subject's face, wherein the base surface model includes a set of control points and each displacement field generates a three-dimensional displacement vector that varies over the control points and over an intensity variable; an intensity generator to generate a current intensity value for each displacement field in the set of displacement fields; a deformation unit to combine the displacement vectors generated by the displacement fields at the control points and at the current intensity values with the positions of the control points to generate a deformed surface model; a rendering unit to translate the deformed surface model into a two-dimensional image of the face; and a video output subsystem to at least one of display and store the two-dimensional image.