Abstract
Facial expression plays an important role in face to face communication in that it conveys nonverbal information and emotional intent beyond speech. In this paper, an approach for facial expression synthesis with an expressive Chinese talking avatar is proposed, where a layered parametric framework is designed to synthesize intermediate facial expressions using PAD emotional parameters [5], which describe the human emotional state with three nearly orthogonal dimensions. Partial Expression Parameter (PEP) is proposed to depict the facial expression movements in specific face regions, which act as the mid-level expression parameters between the low-level Facial Animation Parameters (FAPs) [11] and the high-level PAD emotional parameters. A pseudo facial expression database is established by cloning the real human expression to avatar and the corresponding emotion states for each expression is annotated using PAD score. An emotion-expression mapping model is trained on the database to map the emotion state (PAD) into facial expression configuration (PEP). Perceptual evaluation shows the input PAD value is consistent with that of human perception on synthetic expression, which supports the effectiveness of our approach.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Wu, Z.Y., Zhang, S., Cai, L.H., Meng, H.M.: Real-time Synthesis of Chinese Visual Speech and Facial Expressions using MPEG-4 FAP Features in a Three-dimensional Avatar. In: Proc. Int. Conf. on Spoken Language Processing, pp. 1802–1805 (2006)
Graf, H.P., Cosatto, E., Strom, V., Huang, F.J.: Visual Prosody: Facial Movements Accompanying Speech. In: Fifth IEEE Int. Conf. on Automatic Face and Gesture Recognition, pp. 381–386 (2002)
Du, Y.Z., Lin, X.Y.: Emotional facial expression model building. Pattern Recognition Letters 24(16), 2923–2934 (2003)
Li, X.M., Zhou, H.T., Song, S.Z., Ran, T., Fu, X.L.: The Reliability and Validity of the Chinese Version of Abbreviated PAD Emotion Scales. In: Int. Conf. on Affective Computing and Intelligent Interaction (ACII), pp. 513–518 (2005)
Mehrabian, A.: Pleasure-arousal-dominance: A General Framework for Describing and Measuring Individual Differences in Temperament. Current Psychology: Developmental, Learning, Personality, Social 14, 261–292 (1996)
Ruttkay, Z., Noot, H., Hagen, P.: Emotion Disc and Emotion Squares: Tools to Explore the Facial Expression Space. Computer Graphics Forum 22(1), 49–53 (2003)
Lavagetto, F., Pockaj, R.: An Efficient Use of MPEG-4 FAP Interpolation for Facial Animation at 70 bits/Frame. IEEE Transactions on Circuits and Systems for Video Technology 11(10), 1085–1097 (2001)
Lyons, M., Akamatsu, S., Kamachi, M., Gyoba, J.: Coding. facial expressions with gabor wavelets. In: Proc. of the 3rd IEEE Conf. on Face and Gesture Recognition, pp. 200–205 (1998)
Zhang, S., Wu, Z.Y., Cai, L.H.: Region-based Facial Expression Synthesis on a Three-dimensional Avatar. In: China Conference on Human Computer Interaction(CHCI) (2006)
Zhang, S., Wu, Z.Y., Meng, H.M., Cai, L.H.: Head Movement Synthesis based on Semantic and Prosodic Features for a Chinese Expressive Avatar. In: IEEE Int. Conf. on Acoustics, Speech and Signal Processing (ICASSP) (2007)
Motion Pictures Expert Group, ISO/IEC 14496-2: 1999/Amd. 1: 2000(E). International Standard, Information Technology – Coding of Audio-Visual Objects. Part 2: Visual; Amendment 1: Visual Extensions
Albrecht, I., Schröder, M., Haber, J., Seidel, H.P.: Mixed feelings: expression of non-basic emotions in a muscle-based talking head. Virtual Reality 8(4), 201–212 (2005)
Tsapatsoulis, N., Raousaiou, A., Kollias, S., Cowie, R., Douglas-Cowie, E.: Emotion recognition and synthesis based on MPEG-4 FAPs MPEG-4 facial animation—the standard implementations applications, pp. 141–167. Wiley, Hillsdale (2002)
Kshirsagar, S., Escher, M., Sannier, G., M.-Thalmann, N.: Multimodal Animation System Based on the MPEG-4 Standard. In: Multimedia Modelling 1999, Ottawa, Canada, pp. 215–232 (1999)
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2007 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
About this paper
Cite this paper
Zhang, S., Wu, Z., Meng, H.M., Cai, L. (2007). Facial Expression Synthesis Using PAD Emotional Parameters for a Chinese Expressive Avatar. In: Paiva, A.C.R., Prada, R., Picard, R.W. (eds) Affective Computing and Intelligent Interaction. ACII 2007. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 4738. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-74889-2_3
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-74889-2_3
Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
Print ISBN: 978-3-540-74888-5
Online ISBN: 978-3-540-74889-2
eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)