Describing "INTERFACE" a Matlab© Tool for Building Talking Heads

INTERFACE is a Matlab©.tool for simplifying and automating many of the operations needed for building a talking head. INTERFACE consists of set of processing tools, focusing on dynamic articulatory data physically extracted by an automatic optotracking 3D movement analyzer. The final aim of INTERFACE is that of building up the animation engine of LUCIA our emotive/expressive Italian talking head. LUCIA can be directly driven by an emotional XML tagged input text, thus realizing a true audio visual expressive synthesis. LUCIA’s voice is based on an Italian version of FESTIVAL-MBROLA packages, modified for expressive synthesis by means of an appropriate APML/VSML tagged language. Moreover, by using INTERFACE, it is possible to copy a real human talking by recreating the correct WAV and FAP files needed for the animation by reproducing the movements of some markers positioned on his face and recorded by an optoelectronic device. In this work the latest improvements of INTERFACE will be described and few examples of their application to real cases will be illustrated.