Method for automatically animating lip synchronization and facial expression of animated characters
OwnerMaury Rosenfeldinventor
Life of this patent
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Abstract
A method for controlling and automatically animating lip synchronization and facial expressions of three dimensional animated characters using weighted morph targets and time aligned phonetic transcriptions of recorded text. The method utilizes a set of rules that determine the systems output comprising a stream of morph weight sets when a sequence of timed phonemes and/or other timed data is encountered. Other data, such as timed emotional state data or emotemes such as “surprise, “disgust, “embarrassment”, “timid smile”, or the like, may be inputted to affect the output stream of morph weight sets, or create additional streams.
Claims26
A method for automatically animating lip synchronization and facial expression of three-dimensional characters comprising:
- obtaining a first set of rules that define output morph weight set stream as a function of phoneme sequence and time of said phoneme sequence;
- obtaining a timed data file of phonemes having a plurality of sub-sequences;
- generating an intermediate stream of output morph weight sets and a plurality of transition parameters between two adjacent morph weight sets by evaluating said plurality of sub-sequences against said first set of rules;
- generating a final stream of output morph weight sets at a desired frame rate from said intermediate stream of output morph weight sets and said plurality of transition parameters;
- and
- applying said final stream of output morph weight sets to a sequence of animated characters to produce lip synchronization and facial expression control of said animated characters.
An apparatus for automatically animating lip synchronization and facial expression of three-dimensional characters comprising:
- a computer system;
- a first set of rules in said computer system, said first set of rules defining output morph weight set stream as a function of phoneme sequence and time of said phoneme sequence;
- a timed data file readable by said computer system, said timed data file having phonemes with a plurality of sub-sequences;
- means, in said computer system, for generating an intermediate stream of output morph weight sets and a plurality of transition parameters between two adjacent morph weight sets by evaluating said plurality of sub-sequences against said first set of rules;
- means, in said computer system, for generating a final stream of output morph weight sets at a desired frame rate from said intermediate stream of output morph weight sets and said plurality of transition parameters;
- and
- means, in said computer system, for applying said final stream of output morph weight sets to a sequence of animated characters to produce lip synchronization and facial expression control of said animated characters.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.