INTERFACE toolkit: A new tool for building IVAs

INTERFACE is an integrated software implemented in Matlab© and created to speed-up the procedure for building an emotive/expressive talking head. Various processing tools, working on dynamic articulatory data physically extracted by an optotracking 3D movement analyzer called ELITE, were implemented to build the animation engine and also to create the correct WAV and FAP files needed for the animation. By the use of INTERFACE, LUCIA, our animated MPEG-4 talking face, can copy a real human by reproducing the movements of passive markers positioned on his face and recorded by an optoelectronic device, or can be directly driven by an emotional XML tagged input text, thus realizing a true audio/visual emotive/expressive synthesis. LUCIA's voice is based on an Italian version of FESTIVAL - MBROLA packages, modified for expressive/emotive synthesis by means of an appropriate APML/VSML tagged language.