BUILD | ANIMATION
Speech Graphics CTO Michael Berger (left) and CEO Dr Gregor Hofer (right)
Talking Heads
Speech Graphics is evolving its facial animation service into a tool you can license yourself. Will Freeman catches up with the company’s senior staff to find out more
SCOTTISH TECHNOLOGY outfit Speech Graphics exists as a thriving service company specialising in audio-driven lip syncing. A relative newcomer in the global games
industry, it has already built quite a name for itself with a run of award nominations and wins, and now it has bold plans to repackage its eponymous technology as a tool. “We feel a software company is more scalable and ultimately it’s where we want to go,” confirms Speech Graphics CEO Dr Gregor Hofer. “By offering a tool we can reach more customers with our solution. As to what developers prefer, some say they are happy to outsource to animation services while others prefer the control offered by a tool that can be integrated directly into their production pipeline. We feel there is a place for both models. “Starting with the service model simply
allows us to use interactions with game developers to inform our development program, to ultimately produce a technology that will provide exactly what they want.” Speech Graphics may not be the first service
provider to move on the middleware space, but to hear such a clear-cut plan certainly isn’t
58 |MARCH 2012
typical so early in the life of a games technology company, regardless of discipline or specialty.
And just because the team’s long term plan emphasises fleshing out a tool, it doesn’t mean that Hofer and his colleagues are holding back with their dedication to developing and offering a fully featured service.
FACE FACTS The company’s solution is centred around a model that sees clients provide audio and facial models, which Speech Graphics work on with in-house software tools to produce synchronised animation. “We use ten, proprietary high-level animation channels to drive bones or blendshapes in the same manner,” explains Hofer. “These channels are based on our analysis of the way the human face moves during speech. Output is provided for any of the popular 3D animation packages. The solution works equally well in any language, which means our service is also ideal for re- animating faces in different languages for localisation. Our animation solution has
already been integrated and proven in production pipelines at major game development and motion capture studios.” According to Speech Graphics’ senior members, the tech behind the service betters equivalent audio-driven facial animation systems by pooling speech recognition and graphics experience. In doing so it builds a solution based on muscle dynamics that predicts how human facial muscles move to produce speech sounds. It’s a highly specialised approach, and one its creators insist betters the established model. “Previous audio-driven solutions rely on
very simple lip-sync algorithms, and quality has not changed much since the 1990s,” claims Speech Graphics’ CTO Michael Berger. “With current polygon counts and character realism this lack of improvement is increasingly out of place. Speech is one of the most difficult things to animate convincingly, due to that amazing combination of fluidity and accuracy in natural speech.” For now, that difficulty and Speech Graphics’
technology’s subsequent intricacy means that currently triple-A studios remain the service’s
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