XfaceEd: authoring tool for embodied conversational agents

In this paper, XfaceEd, our open source, platform independent tool for authoring 3D embodied conversational agents (ECAs) is presented. Following MPEG-4 Facial Animation (FA) standard, XfaceEd provides an easy to use interface to generate MPEG-4 ready ECAs from static 3D models. Users can set MPEG-4 Facial Definition Points (FDP) and Facial Animation Parameter Units (FAPU), define the zone of influence of each feature point and how this influence is propagated among the neighboring vertices. As an alternative to MPEG-4, one can also specify morph targets for different categories such as visemes, emotions and expressions, in order to achieve facial animation using the keyframe interpolation technique. Morph targets from different categories are blended to create more lifelike behaviour. Results can be previewed and parameters can be tweaked real time within the application for fine tuning. Changes made take into effect immediately, which in turn ensures rapid production. The fi...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2005
• Where: ICMI
• Authors: Koray Balci
• Keywords: Embodied Conversational Agents, Facial Animation, ICMI 2005, MPEG-4 Facial Animation