On the development of a talking head system based on the use of PDE-based parametic surfaces

Abstract

In this work we propose a talking head system based on animating facial expressions using a template face generated from a Partial Differential Equation (PDE). It uses a set of pre-configured curves (as boundary conditions for the chosen PDE) to calculate an internal template surface face. This surface is then used to associate various facial features with a given 3D face object. Motion retargeting is then used to transfer the deformations in these areas from the template to the target object. The procedure is continued until all the expressions in the database are calculated and transferred to the target 3D human face object. Additionally the system interacts with the user using an artificial intelligence (AI) chatterbot to generate response from a given text. Speech and facial animation are synchronized using the Microsoft Speech API, whereby the response from the AI bot is converted to speech. © 2011 Springer-Verlag.