MPEG-4 facial animation: the standard, implementation, and applications

Igor S. Pandzic, Robert Forchheimer9780470844656, 0-470-84465-5

This book concentrates on the animation of faces. The Editors put the MPEG-4 FA standard against the historical background of research on facial animation and model-based coding, and provide a brief history of the development of the standard itself. In part 2 there is a comprehensive overview of the FA specification with the goal of helping the reader understand how the standard really works. Part 3, forms the bulk of the book and covers the implementations of the standard on both encoding and decoding side. Several face animation techniques for MPEG-4 FA decoders are presented. While the standard itself actually specifies only the decoder, for applications it is interesting to look at the wide range of technologies for producing and encoding the FA contents. These include video analysis, speech analysis and synthesis, as well as keyframe animation. The last part of the book provides several examples of applications using the MPEG-4 FA standard.It will be useful for companies implementing products and services related to the new standard, researchers in several domains related to facial animation, as well as wider technical audience interested in new technologies and applications.· * The main people involved in the standardization process are contributors to the book * Provides several examples of applications using the MPEG-4 Facial Animation standard, including video and speech analysis * This will become THE reference for the MPEG-4 Facial Animation * Aids the understanding of the reasoning behind the standard specification, how it works and what the potential applications are * Gives an overview of the technologies directly related to the standard and its implementation Essential reading for the Industry and research community especially engineers, researchers and developers.

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Table of contents :
MPEG-4 Facial Animation……Page 1
Copyright……Page 4
Contents……Page 5
List of Contributors……Page 13
Author Biographies……Page 17
Foreword……Page 25
Preface……Page 27
Part1 Background……Page 29
Ch1 Origins of MPEG-4 Facial Animation Standard……Page 31
Part2 Standard……Page 43
Ch2 Face Animation in MPEG-4……Page 45
Ch3 MPEG-4 Face Animation Conformance……Page 85
Part3 Implementations……Page 91
Ch4 MPEG-4 Facial Animation Framework for Web & Mobile Applications……Page 93
Ch5 Facial Animation Engine……Page 109
Ch6 Extracting MPEG-4 FAPs from Video……Page 131
Ch7 Real-Time Speech-Driven Face Animation……Page 143
Ch8 Visual Text-to-Speech……Page 153
Ch9 Emotion Recognition & Synthesis based on MPEG-4 FAPs……Page 169
Ch10 InterFace Software Platform for Interactive Virtual Characters……Page 197
Part4 Applications……Page 213
Ch11 Model-based Coding: Complete System……Page 215
Ch12 Facial Animation Case Study for HCI: VHML-Based Mentor System……Page 247
Ch13 PlayMail–Put Words into other People’s Mouth……Page 269
Ch14 E-Cogent: Electronic Convincing aGENT……Page 281
Ch15 alterEGO: Video Analysis for Facial Animation……Page 293
Ch16 EPTAMEDIA: Virtual Guides & other Applications……Page 301
App1 Evaluating MPEG-4 Facial Animation Players……Page 315
App2 Web Resources……Page 321
Index……Page 323