Guest Speaker

GENERATING ANIMATED UTTERANCES

Matthew Stone
Computer Science and Cognitive Science
Rutgers

Thurs., Oct. 28th
3:30pm; 480 Dreese Labs
All interested parties are invited.
Refreshments will be served immediately preceding the talk.

Abstract:
People's utterances in conversation are composed of short, clearly-delimited phrases; in each phrase, gesture and speech go together meaningfully and synchronize at a common point of maximum emphasis. In our work on RUTH, the Rutgers University Talking Head, we rely on this structure to create general-purpose annotation and synthesis to animate an expressive talking face. In our ongoing work, we also exploit this structure in methods to create animated conversational characters using databases of recorded speech and captured motion. We start with tools that help create scripts for performers, help annotate and segment performance data, and construct specific messages for characters to use within application contexts. Our animations then reproduce the structure of natural utterances. They recombine motion samples with new speech samples to recreate coherent phrases, and blend segments of speech and motion together phrase-by-phrase into extended utterances. By framing problems for utterance generation and synthesis so that they can draw closely on a talented performance, our techniques support the rapid construction of animated characters with rich and appropriate expression.

Links:
DeCarlo et al. CAVW Journal 2004. - http://www.cs.rutgers.edu/~village/ruth
Stone et al. SIGGRAPH Conference 2004. - http://www.cs.rutgers.edu/~decarlo/swh.html

Host: Donna Byron