US 12,315,054 B2
Real-time generation of speech animation
Mark Sagar, Auckland (NZ); Tim Szu-Hsien Wu, Auckland Central (NZ); Xiani Tan, Auckland (NZ); and Xueyuan Zhang, Auckland (NZ)
Assigned to SOUL MACHINES LIMITED, Auckland (NZ)
Appl. No. 17/422,167
Filed by Soul Machines Limited, Auckland (NZ)
PCT Filed Jan. 27, 2020, PCT No. PCT/IB2020/050620
§ 371(c)(1), (2) Date Jul. 9, 2021,
PCT Pub. No. WO2020/152657, PCT Pub. Date Jul. 30, 2020.
Claims priority of application No. 750233 (NZ), filed on Jan. 25, 2019.
Prior Publication US 2022/0108510 A1, Apr. 7, 2022
Int. Cl. G06T 13/20 (2011.01); G06T 13/80 (2011.01); G10L 15/02 (2006.01); G10L 21/12 (2013.01); G10L 21/10 (2013.01)
CPC G06T 13/205 (2013.01) [G06T 13/80 (2013.01); G10L 15/02 (2013.01); G10L 21/12 (2013.01); G10L 2015/025 (2013.01); G10L 2021/105 (2013.01)] 14 Claims
OG exemplary drawing
 
1. A method for animating a communicative utterance comprising:
receiving a String to be animated, the String comprising a plurality of communicative utterance atoms;
receiving a plurality of Collections, each Collection including a plurality of Items comprising unique atom strings, each Collection storing Items of different lengths, wherein at least one of the Items is based on an occurrence of acoustic silence before or after a particular communicative utterance atom, and each Item including at least one Animation Snippet of the Item;
hierarchically searching the Collections for Items matching substrings of the String, wherein the hierarchical searching favours longer Items;
retrieving Animation Snippets for matched Items to cover the communicative utterance atoms; and
combining the retrieved Animation Snippets to animate the String.