1. A method of video conferencing, the method comprising the steps of: detecting a human face of a video conference participant depicted in portions of a video stream; creating by explicitly modeling one or more explicit object models to model the face of the video conference participant; generating one or more implicit object models relative to parameters obtained from the explicit object models to facilitate creation of a compact encoding of the video conference participant's face; using the implicit object model, creating a photorealistic avatar representation of the video conference participant; periodically checking to determine whether the implicit object model is working optimally; and responding to a determination that the implicit object model is not working by processing the step of detecting a human face of a video conference participant and in response to detecting a human face, searching for existing calibration information for the detected human face.