Apparatus and method for lip-synching animation
First Claim
1. Apparatus for producing lip-synching for a spoken sound track, comprising:
- means for storing, for each of a number of mouth positions, an unvoiced phonetic information representation associated with a mouth position;
means responsive to samples of sound from the sound track for generating unvoiced phonetic information signals for the samples;
means for comparing said unvoiced phonetic information signals with the stored unvoiced phonetic information representations to determine which of the stored representations most closely matches the unvoiced phonetic information signals; and
means for storing the determined representations in time correspondence with the sound track.
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Abstract
The disclosed invention takes advantage of the fact that the speech information and processing needed for successful animation lip-synching is actually much less than the information and processing which is needed for identifying individual words, as in the traditional speech recognition task, The disclosed embodiment utilizes linear prediction to obtain speech parameters which can be used to identify phonemes from a limited set corresponding to visually distinctive mouth positions. In the disclosed embodiment there is set forth an apparatus for producing lip-synching for a spoken sound track. Means are provided for storing, for each of a number of mouth positions, an unvoiced phonetic information representation associated with a mouth position. Means, responsive to samples of sound from the sound track, are provided for generating unvoiced phonetic information signals for the samples. Further means are provided for comparing the unvoiced phonetic information signals with the stored unvoiced phonetic information representations to determine which of the stored representations most closely matches the unvoiced phonetic information signals. The determined representations are then stored in time correspondence with the sound track.
72 Citations
19 Claims
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1. Apparatus for producing lip-synching for a spoken sound track, comprising:
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means for storing, for each of a number of mouth positions, an unvoiced phonetic information representation associated with a mouth position; means responsive to samples of sound from the sound track for generating unvoiced phonetic information signals for the samples; means for comparing said unvoiced phonetic information signals with the stored unvoiced phonetic information representations to determine which of the stored representations most closely matches the unvoiced phonetic information signals; and means for storing the determined representations in time correspondence with the sound track. - View Dependent Claims (2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8)
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9. A method for producing lip-synching for a spoken sound track, comprising the steps of:
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storing, for each of a number of mouth positions, an unvoiced phonetic information representation associated with a mouth position; generating, in response to samples of sound from the sound track, unvoiced phonetic information signals for the samples; comparing the unvoiced phonetic information signals with the stored unvoiced phonetic information representations to determine which of the stored representations most closely matches the unvoiced phonetic information signals; and storing the determined representations in time correspondence with the sound track. - View Dependent Claims (10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15)
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16. A method for receiving input training utterances for each of a number of different mouth positions, and for subsequently lip-synching a spoken sound track, comprising the steps of:
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(a) storing, for each training utterance, an unvoiced phonetic information representation of a sample of sound from the utterance; (b) generating, for a sample of the sound track, unvoiced phonetic information signals; (c) comparing the unvoiced phonetic information signals with the stored unvoiced phonetic information representation for each training utterance, and determining which training utterance provides the best match; (d) storing, in conjunction with the time of the sample of the soundtrack, an indication of the mouth position corresponding to the training utterance which provided the best match; and repeating steps (b), (c) and (d) for subsequent samples of the sound track. - View Dependent Claims (17, 18, 19)
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Specification