We present a method for generating realistic speech-synchronized facial animations using a physics-based approach and support for coarticulation, i.e. the coloring of a speech segment by surrounding segments. We have implemented several extensions to the original coarticulation algorithm of Cohen and Massaro (M. M. Cohen, D. W. Massaro. Modeling Coarticulation in Synthetic Visual Speech. In Models and Techniques in Computer Animation., pages 139-156. Springer Verlag, Tokyo, 1993). The enhancements include an optimization to improve performance as well as special treatment of closure and release phases of bilabial stops and other phonemes. Furthermore, for phonemes that are shorter than the sampling intervals of the algorithm and might therefore be missed, additional key frames are created to ensure their impact onto the animation.

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Last modified: Thu Oct 18 09:41:31 CEST 2001 by Irene Albrecht