• KSII Transactions on Internet and Information Systems (TIIS)
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• v.14 no.8
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• pp.3473-3487
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• 2020

In this paper, we present a new approach to creating speech animation with emotional expressions using a small set of example models. To generate realistic facial animation, two example models called key visemes and expressions are used for lip-synchronization and facial expressions, respectively. The key visemes represent lip shapes of phonemes such as vowels and consonants while the key expressions represent basic emotions of a face. Our approach utilizes a text-to-speech (TTS) system to create a phonetic transcript for the speech animation. Based on a phonetic transcript, a sequence of speech animation is synthesized by interpolating the corresponding sequence of key visemes. Using an input parameter vector, the key expressions are blended by a method of scattered data interpolation. During the synthesizing process, an importance-based scheme is introduced to combine both lip-synchronization and facial expressions into one animation sequence in real time (over 120Hz). The proposed approach can be applied to diverse types of digital content and applications that use facial animation with high accuracy (over 90%) in speech recognition.

• KIPS Transactions on Software and Data Engineering
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• v.12 no.10
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• pp.461-470
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• 2023

While speech animation generation employing deep learning has been actively researched for English, there has been no prior work for Korean. Given the fact, this paper for the very first time employs supervised deep learning to generate Korean speech animation. By doing so, we find out the significant effect of deep learning being able to make speech animation research come down to speech recognition research which is the predominating technique. Also, we study the way to make best use of the effect for Korean speech animation generation. The effect can contribute to efficiently and efficaciously revitalizing the recently inactive Korean speech animation research, by clarifying the top priority research target. This paper performs this process: (i) it chooses blendshape animation technique, (ii) implements the deep-learning model in the master-servant pipeline of the automatic speech recognition (ASR) module and the facial action coding (FAC) module, (iii) makes Korean speech facial motion capture dataset, (iv) prepares two comparison deep learning models (one model adopts the English ASR module, the other model adopts the Korean ASR module, however both models adopt the same basic structure for their FAC modules), and (v) train the FAC modules of both models dependently on their ASR modules. The user study demonstrates that the model which adopts the Korean ASR module and dependently trains its FAC module (getting 4.2/5.0 points) generates decisively much more natural Korean speech animations than the model which adopts the English ASR module and dependently trains its FAC module (getting 2.7/5.0 points). The result confirms the aforementioned effect showing that the quality of the Korean speech animation comes down to the accuracy of Korean ASR.

• The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
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• v.5 no.2
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• pp.147-155
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• 2005

In this paper, we present a FAES(a Facial Animation with Emotion and Speech) system for speech-driven face animation with emotions. We animate face cartoons not only from input speech, but also based on emotions derived from speech signal. And also our system can ensure smooth transitions and exact representation in animation. To do this, after collecting the training data, we have made the database using SVM(Support Vector Machine) to recognize four different categories of emotions: neutral, dislike, fear and surprise. So that, we can make the system for speech-driven animation with emotions. Also, we trained on Korean young person and focused on only Korean emotional face expressions. Experimental results of our system demonstrate that more emotional areas expanded and the accuracies of the emotional recognition and the continuous speech recognition are respectively increased 7% and 5% more compared with the previous method.

• Journal of the Korea Computer Graphics Society
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• v.26 no.3
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• pp.49-59
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• 2020

In this paper, we propose a speech animation synthesis specialized in Korean through a rule-based co-articulation model. Speech animation has been widely used in the cultural industry, such as movies, animations, and games that require natural and realistic motion. Because the technique for audio driven speech animation has been mainly developed for English, however, the animation results for domestic content are often visually very unnatural. For example, dubbing of a voice actor is played with no mouth motion at all or with an unsynchronized looping of simple mouth shapes at best. Although there are language-independent speech animation models, which are not specialized in Korean, they are yet to ensure the quality to be utilized in a domestic content production. Therefore, we propose a natural speech animation synthesis method that reflects the linguistic characteristics of Korean driven by an input audio and text. Reflecting the features that vowels mostly determine the mouth shape in Korean, a coarticulation model separating lips and the tongue has been defined to solve the previous problem of lip distortion and occasional missing of some phoneme characteristics. Our model also reflects the differences in prosodic features for improved dynamics in speech animation. Through user studies, we verify that the proposed model can synthesize natural speech animation.

• Journal of the Institute of Electronics Engineers of Korea CI
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• v.37 no.5
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• pp.54-63
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• 2000

In this paper, we implemented cyber character that can do speech recognition, speech synthesis, Motion tracking and 3D animation. For speech recognition, we used Discrete-HMM algorithm with K-means 128 level vector quantization and MFCC feature vector. For speech synthesis, we used demi-syllables TD-PSOLA algorithm. For PC based Motion tracking, we present Fast Optical Flow like Method. And for animating 3D model, we used vertex interpolation with DirectSD retained mode. Finally, we implemented cyber character integrated above systems, which game calculating by the multiplication table with user and the cyber character always look at user using of Motion tracking system.

• Journal of Digital Contents Society
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• v.9 no.3
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• pp.389-398
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• 2008

There has been some research into a speech system for communications between those who are hearing impaired and those who hear normally, but the system has been pursued in inefficient teaching ways in which existing teachers teach each individual due to social indifference and a lack of marketability. In order to overcome such a weakness, there appeared to be a need to develop contents utilizing 3D animation and digital technology. For the investigation of a standard face and a standard spherical shape for the preparation of a character, the study collected sufficient data concerning students in the third-sixth grades in elementary schools in Seoul and Gyeonggi, Korea, and drew up standards for a face and a spherical shape of such students. This data is not merely the basic data of content development for the hearing impaired, but it can also offer a standard measurement and a standard type realistically applicable to them. As a system for understanding conversations by applying 3D character animation and educating self-expression, the character speech animation system supports effective learning for language education for hearing impaired children who need language education within their families and in special education institutions with the combination of 3D technology and motion capture.

• 한국정보컨버전스학회:학술대회논문집
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• 2008.06a
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• pp.53-56
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• 2008

This paper reports on the ACQA(Animated agent for Conversational Question Answering) project conducted at LIMSI. The aim is to design an expressive animated conversational agent(ACA) for conducting research along two main lines: 1/ perceptual experiments(eg perception of expressivity and 3D movements in both audio and visual channels): 2/ design of human-computer interfaces requiring head models at different resolutions and the integration of the talking head in virtual scenes. The target application of this expressive ACA is a real-time question and answer speech based system developed at LIMSI(RITEL). The architecture of the system is based on distributed modules exchanging messages through a network protocol. The main components of the system are: RITEL a question and answer system searching raw text, which is able to produce a text(the answer) and attitudinal information; this attitudinal information is then processed for delivering expressive tags; the text is converted into phoneme, viseme, and prosodic descriptions. Audio speech is generated by the LIMSI selection-concatenation text-to-speech engine. Visual speech is using MPEG4 keypoint-based animation, and is rendered in real-time by Virtual Choreographer (VirChor), a GPU-based 3D engine. Finally, visual and audio speech is played in a 3D audio and visual scene. The project also puts a lot of effort for realistic visual and audio 3D rendering. A new model of phoneme-dependant human radiation patterns is included in the speech synthesis system, so that the ACA can move in the virtual scene with realistic 3D visual and audio rendering.

• The Journal of Korea Robotics Society
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• v.13 no.1
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• pp.16-25
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• 2018

The talking head (TH) indicates an utterance face animation generated based on text and voice input. In this paper, we propose the generation method of TH with facial expression and intonation by speech input only. The problem of generating TH from speech can be regarded as a regression problem from the acoustic feature sequence to the facial code sequence which is a low dimensional vector representation that can efficiently encode and decode a face image. This regression was modeled by bidirectional RNN and trained by using SAVEE database of the front utterance face animation database as training data. The proposed method is able to generate TH with facial expression and intonation TH by using acoustic features such as MFCC, dynamic elements of MFCC, energy, and F0. According to the experiments, the configuration of the BLSTM layer of the first and second layers of bidirectional RNN was able to predict the face code best. For the evaluation, a questionnaire survey was conducted for 62 persons who watched TH animations, generated by the proposed method and the previous method. As a result, 77% of the respondents answered that the proposed method generated TH, which matches well with the speech.

• Cartoon and Animation Studies
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• s.49
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• pp.677-696
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• 2017

Cartoons and consequently animation are an effective way of visualizing futuristic scenarios. Here we look at how animation is becoming ubiquitous and an integral part of this future today: the cybernetic and mediated society that we are being transformed into. Animation therefore becomes a form of speech between humans and this networked reality, either as an interface or as representation that gives temporal form to objects. Animation or specifically animated films usually are associated with character based short and feature films, fiction or nonfiction. However animation is not constricted to traditional cinematic formats and language, the same way that design and communication have become treated as separate fields, however according to $Vil{\acute{e}}m$ Flusser they aren't. The same premise can be applied to animation in a networked culture: Animation has become an intrinsic to design processes and products - as in motion graphics, interface design and three-dimensional visualization. Video-games, virtual reality, map based apps and social networks constitute layers of an expanded universe that embodies our network based culture. They are products of design and media disciplines that are increasingly relying on animation as a universal language suited to multi-cultural interactions carried in digital ambients. In this sense animation becomes a discourse, the same way as Roland Barthes describes myth as a type of speech. With the objective of exploring the role of animation as a design tool, the proposed research intends to develop transmedia creative visual strategies using animation both as narrative and as an user interface.

• Proceedings of the IEEK Conference
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• 1999.06a
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• pp.699-707
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• 1999

It cannot be argued that speech is the most natural interfacing tool between men and machines. In order to realize acceptable speech interfaces, highly advanced speech recognizers and synthesizers are inevitable. Text-to-Speech(TTS) technology has been attracting a lot of interest among speech engineers because of its own benefits. Namely, the possible application areas of talking computers, emergency alarming systems in speech, speech output devices fur speech-impaired, and so on. Hence, many researchers have made significant progresses in the speech synthesis techniques in the sense of their own languages and as a result, the quality of currently available speech synthesizers are believed to be acceptable to normal users. These are partly why the MPEG group had decided to include the TTS technology as one of its MPEG-4 functionalities. ETRI has made major contributions to the current MPEG-4 TTS among various MPEG-4 functionalities. They are; 1) use of original prosody for synthesized speech output, 2) trick mode functions fer general users without breaking synthesized speech prosody, 3) interoperability with Facial Animation(FA) tools, and 4) dubbing a moving/animated picture with lib-shape pattern information.