An MPEG-4 facial animation system driven by synthetic speech

Author

Lande, Claudio ; Francini, Gianluca

Author_Institution

Centro Studi e Lab. Telecommun. SpA, Torino, Italy

fYear

1998

fDate

12-15 Oct 1998

Firstpage

203

Lastpage

212

Abstract

The paper provides an overview of the activities that have led to the development of a prototype application of a “talking head” compliant with MPEG-4 specification. The work done so far fits into the context of one of the recent work-items defined by the ISO/IEC JTC1/SC29/WG11, known world-wide as MPEG. This ISO Working Group is now in the process of defining a unifying framework where natural and synthetic audiovisual objects can be combined and rendered as a unique combination of synchronised interactive media. The developed facial animation system implements the following features: animation of predefined/downloaded face models and animation of face models driven either by speech synthesis applications or by MPEG-4 animation parameters. To improve photo-realism, face models can be texture mapped and calibrated according to the countenances of real people

Keywords

computer animation; image texture; realistic images; rendering (computer graphics); speech synthesis; ISO Working Group; ISO/IEC JTC1/SC29/WG11; MPEG-4 animation parameters; MPEG-4 facial animation system; calibration; downloaded face models; natural audiovisual objects; photo-realism; predefined face models; speech synthesis; synchronised interactive media; synthetic audiovisual objects; synthetic speech; talking head; texture mapping; Decision support systems; Facial animation; MPEG 4 Standard; Speech;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Multimedia Modeling, 1998. MMM '98. Proceedings. 1998

Conference_Location

Lausanne

Print_ISBN

0-8186-8911-0

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/MULMM.1998.723005

Filename

723005