A Software Facial Expression Synthesizer With The Chinese Text-To-Speech Function

• Main Authors: Perng, Woei-Luen, 彭偉倫
• Other Authors: Ming Ouhyoung
• Format: Others
• Language: en_US
• Published: 1998
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/36812411020450879129

碩士 === 國立臺灣大學 === 資訊工程學系 === 86 === The proposed system is named Image Talk: a real-time synthetic talking head using one single image with Chinese text-to-speech capability. Image Talk uses one single image to automatically create video-like talking sequences in real time. The image can be acquired from a photograph, video clip, or hand drawn characters. This interactive system accepts Chinese text input and talks back in Mandarin Chinese, generating facial expression in real time. Image Talk analyzes Chinese text by converting it to a standard Pinyin system used in Taiwan and fetches the associated facial expressions from an expression pool dynamically. The expressions are synchronized with the synthetic speech and played back in the video-like talking sequence in real time. Image Talk also incorporates eye blinking, small-scale head rotation and translation perturbations, to make the results more natural. It is also easy to switch to any other facial or non-facial images, such as animals or machines for special effects. The result is quite entertaining, and can easily be used as a new human-machine interface, as well as for lip synchronization for computer animated characters.