Multilingual Virtual Performer
(T. T. Wong, Helen M. L. Meng and P. A. Heng)

Virtual characters have been heavily used in computer games, TV programs and movie production. However, lip synchronization is still a tedious and difficult task. Animators have to spend hours and hours of time to fine tune the parameters in order to achieve realistic effect. We are developing a system that allows us to easily model virtual characters with realistic and natural talking and singing abilities. It provides natural human-computer interface. The system offers a real-time text-to-speech synthesis. Lip shape parameters are generated and fed to the rendering engine for facial animation in real-time.

Since the system is based on International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) standard, it supports multi-language including Cantonese, Mandarin, Japanese, and English. With this system, animators can easily produce lip-synchronized character facial animation. There are a lot of applications including character modeling in computer games, TV and movies, computer-assisted education and even the latest virtual idol.