Voice Puppetry

We introduce a method for predicting a control signal from another related signal, and apply it to voice puppetry: Generating full facial animation from expressive information in an audio track. The voice puppet learns a facial control model from computer vision of real facial behavior, automatically incorporating vocal and facial dynamics such as co-articulation. Animation is produced by using audio to drive the model, which induces a probability distribution over the manifold of possible facial motions. We present a lineartime closed-form solution for the most probable trajectory over this manifold. The output is a series of facial control parameters, suitable for driving many different kinds of animation ranging from video-realistic image warps to 3D cartoon characters. CR Categories: I.3.7 [Computer Graphics]: Three-Dimensional Graphics and Realism—Animation; I.2.9 [Artificial Intelligence]: Robotics—Kinematics and Dynamics; I.4.8 [Image Processing and Computer Vision]: Scene...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 1999
• Where: SIGGRAPH
• Authors: Matthew Brand
• Keywords: Computer Graphics, Computer Vision, Facial, Facial Control, SIGGRAPH 1999