Appeal No. 1997-1586
Application No. 08/183,671
BACKGROUND
The appellants’ invention relates to a picture synthesizing method and apparatus. The
system synthesizes lip movements from an input string of characters to form realistic
speech in the image corresponding to the phonemes derived from the string of characters.
An understanding of the invention can be derived from a reading of exemplary claim 1,
which is reproduced below.
1. A picture synthesizing method for synthesizing a moving picture of a person’s face
having mouth-shape variations from a train of input characters,
comprising the steps of:
developing from the train of input characters a train of phonemes, utilizing a speech
synthesis technique outputting, for each phoneme, a corresponding vocal sound feature
including articulation mode and its duration of each corresponding phoneme of the train of
phonemes;
determining for each phoneme a mouth-shape feature corresponding to each
phoneme on the basis of the corresponding vocal sound feature, said mouth-shape feature
including the degree of opening of the mouth, the degree of roundness of the lips, the
height of the lower jaw in a raised and a lowered position, and the degree to which the
tongue is seen,
determining values of mouth-shape parameters, for each phoneme, for
representing a concrete mouth-shaped on the basis of the mouth-shape feature; and
controlling the values of the mouth-shape parameters, for each phoneme, for each
frame of the moving picture in accordance with the duration of each phoneme, thereby
synthesizing the moving picture having mouth-shape variations matched with a speech
output audible in case of reading the train of input characters.
2
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