Facial Animation, Facial Modeling, Speech Synchroniation, Lip-Synch 

Creating animated speech requires a facial model capable of representing the myriad shapes the human face experiences during speech and a method to produce the correct shape at the correct time. We present a facial model designed to support animated speech. Our model has a highly deformable lip model that is grafted onto the input facial geometry providing the necessary geometric complexity for creating lip shapes and high-quality lip renderings. We provide a highly deformable tongue model that can represent the shapes the tongue experiences during speech. We add teeth, gums, and upper palate geometry to complete the inner mouth. For more realistic movement of the skin we consider the underlying soft and hard tissue. To decrease the processing time we hierarchically deform the facial surface. We also present a method to animate the facial model over time to create animated speech. We use a track-based animation system that has one facial model parameter per track with possibly more than one track per parameter. The tracks contain control points for a curve that describes the value of the parameter over time. We allow many different types and orders of curves that can be combined in different manners. For more realistic speech we develop a coarticulation model that defines visemes as curves instead of a single position. This treats a viseme as a dynamic shaping of the vocal tract and not as a static shape. 

Presented in Partial Fulllment of the Requirements for
the Degree Doctor of Philosophy in the
Graduate School of The Ohio State University
By
Scott Alan King, B.S., M.S.
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The Ohio State University