TechFest 2011: 3D Photo-Realistic Talking Head

This research showcases a new, 3-D, photo-real talking head with freely controlled head motions and facial expressions. It extends our prior, high-quality, 2-D, photo-real talking head to 3-D. First, we apply a 2-D-to-3-D reconstruction algorithm frame by frame on a 2-D video to construct a 3-D training database. In training, super-feature vectors consisting of 3-D geometry, texture, and speech are formed to train a statistical, multistreamed, Hidden Markov Model (HMM). The HMM then is used to synthesize both the trajectories of geometric animation and dynamic texture. The 3-D talking head can be animated by the geometric trajectory, while the facial expressions and articulator movements are rendered with dynamic texture sequences. Head motions and facial expression also can be separately controlled by manipulating corresponding parameters. The new 3-D talking head has many useful applications, such as voice agents, telepresence, gaming, and speech-to-speech translation.