System and method for automatic animation generation

• US 6,636,219 B2
• Filed: 02/26/1998
• Issued: 10/21/2003
• Est. Priority Date: 02/26/1998
• Status: Expired due to Fees

• Current Assignee: Afluo LLC (L2 Technology LLC)
• Original Assignee: Learn.com (Oracle Corporation)
• Inventors: Merrick, Richard, Thenhaus, Michael, Bell, Wesley, Zartler, Mark
• Primary Examiner(s): Padmanabhan, Mano
• Application Number:
  US09/031,488
• Publication Number:
  US 20020089504A1
• Time in Patent Office: 2,063 Days
• Field of Search: 345/473, 704/275, 704/276, 704/260
• US Class Current: 345/473
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/0481 based on specific properties of the displayed interaction object or a metaphor-based environment, e.g. interaction with desktop elements like windows or icons, or assisted by a cursor's changing behaviour or appearance
• CPC Class Codes: G06T 13/40 of characters, e.g. humans, animals or virtual beings
• CPC Class Codes: G10L 15/26 Speech to text systems G10L15/08 takes precedence
• CPC Class Codes: G10L 2015/025 Phonemes, fenemes or fenones being the recognition units
• CPC Class Codes: G10L 2021/105 Synthesis of the lips movements from speech, e.g. for talking heads
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/8106 involving special audio data, e.g. different tracks for different languages
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/8146 involving graphical data, e.g. 3D object, 2D graphics
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/854 Content authoring
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/8543 using a description language, e.g. Multimedia and Hypermedia information coding Expert Group [MHEG], eXtensible Markup Language [XML] information retrieval of semistructured data, the underlying structure being taken into account, e.g. mark-up language structure data G06F16/80

Abstract

The present invention provides an easy to use tool for preparing animated characters for use on the Internet. Requiring only limited user input and selection, the system of the present invention automatically choreographs and synchronizes reusable animation components with dialog streams. Once generated, the resulting choreography may be embedded into a hypertext markup language (HTML) web page with an appropriate audio player plug-in to deliver any number of animated dialogues with minimal wait time and minimal developer effort.

Claims

1. An automatic animation generation system comprising:

a developer terminal;

a character database containing data representative of at least one character having limbs and a mouth and a limited number of different gestures and mouth positions associated with each such character, said gestures including different movements of the character'"'"'s limbs;

an animation preparation application, said animation preparation application in communication with said developer terminal and said character database and said animation preparation application generating a plurality of output files representative of animation;

said output files including commands specifying movements of the character'"'"'s limbs by identifying the limbs involved in the movements and the nature of the movements, and further specifying time durations associated with the respective movements, including automatically assigned movements of the character'"'"'s limbs using analysis of dialog features;

said character database being responsive to said commands to generate an animation sequence comprising the movements and taking into account the durations specified by said commands;

a choreography file containing lip synchronization information; and

a dialog processor analyzing dialog and automatically assigning default choreography said dialog processor being responsive to dialog provided thereto to access the choreography file and the character database and select therefrom gestures and mouth positions in accordance with the provided dialog.

2. The automatic animation generation system of claim 1 wherein said animation preparation application further comprises a user interface control for processing a graphical user interface for display on said developer terminal.

3. The automatic animation generation system of claim 1 wherein said output files reside on an animation server and are accessible by a client in order to allow said client to execute said animation.

4. The automatic animation generation system of claim 1 wherein said animation preparation applications generates said animation dependent upon developer input, one or more stored audio files and the data contained in said character database.

5. The automatic animation generation system of claim 1 wherein at least one character model having character attributes is transmitted to a client for executing said animation.

6. A system as in claim 1 including a source of high level behavior commands, wherein said dialog processor is responsive to said high level behavior commands to modify said default choreography.

7. A method of preparing character animation sequences comprising:

storing a character database containing data representative of at least one character and of a limited number of gestures associated with the character, said character having limbs and a mouth, and said gestures including different positions of the limbs and of the mouth;

providing commands specifying respective positions of the character'"'"'s limbs and time durations associated with the respective positions of the limbs;

supplying a dialog file representing speech by the character;

applying the commands to the database and to the dialog file to produce output files representing animation sequences involving movements of the character'"'"'s limbs and mouth synchronized with said speech, including limb choreography automatically assigned in response to features of said speech;

responding to dynamic inputs while displaying the animation sequences to change the animation sequences being displayed in a selected manner related to the dynamic input.

8. A method as in claim 7 including selectively providing high level behavior commands modifying the gestures in said animation sequence.