Toolkit for animation of Finnish talking head.
Michael Frydrych, Jari Kätsyri, Martin Dobšík, Mikko E. Sams · 2003
We have designed and implemented a toolkit for real-time ani-mation of virtual 3D talking head, “Artificial Person”. Synchro-nized auditory and visual speech are automatically produced from input text, which can be enriched by user definable com-mands to perform specific gestures, as for example head nod-ding or facial expressions. The toolkit is extensible through ex-ternal configuration files, so new actions can be quickly added. We have configured the Artificial Person to display facial ex-pressions and phoneme articulations. Modular design of the toolkit allows to easily replace parts of the system or to detach and run them on different computers. Our aim was to create a tool that can be used to produce real-istic facial animation for creating controllable stimuli in psy-chophysical and neurophysiological research on audio-visual perception of speech and emotions. 1.