Audio driven facial animation for audio-visual reality

In this paper, we demonstrate a morphing based automated audio driven facial animation system. Based on an incoming audio stream, a face image is animated with full lip synchronization and expression. An animation sequence using optical flow between visemes is constructed, given an incoming audio stream and still pictures of a face speaking different visemes. Rules are formulated based on coarticulation and the duration of a viseme to control the continuity in terms of shape and extent of lip opening. In addition to this new viseme-expression combinations are synthesized to be able to generate animations with new facial expressions. Finally various applications of this system are discussed in the context of creating audio-visual reality.