Audio-driven emotional speech animation for interactive virtual characters

C. Charalambous, Z. Yumak, A.F. van der Stappen

Research output: Contribution to journalArticleAcademicpeer-review

Abstract

We present a procedural audio‐driven speech animation method for interactive virtual characters. Given any audio with its respective speech transcript, we automatically generate lip‐synchronized speech animation that could drive any three‐dimensional virtual character. The realism of the animation is enhanced by studying the emotional features of the audio signal and its effect on mouth movements. We also propose a coarticulation model that takes into account various linguistic rules. The generated animation is configurable by the user by modifying the control parameters, such as viseme types, intensities, and coarticulation curves. We compare our approach against two lip‐synchronized speech animation generators. Our results show that our method surpasses them in terms of user preference.
Original languageEnglish
Article number1892
Number of pages11
JournalComputer Animation and Virtual Worlds
Volume30
Issue number3-4
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 26 Jun 2019

Keywords

  • audio-driven speech animation
  • emotional speech
  • procedural animation

Fingerprint

Dive into the research topics of 'Audio-driven emotional speech animation for interactive virtual characters'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.

Cite this