|15 November 2016|
Scotland
An award-winning software company which creates pioneering facial animation technology for the entertainment industry is today launching a game-changing new platform.
Speech Graphics has worked with some of the world’s biggest names – including Warner Brothers – and its debut animation software SGX is set to transform the industry.
SGX makes it possible for video game studios to execute large batches of facial animation of thousands of lines of dialogue in-house, using only audio recordings, without needing to outsource to specialists.
And the Coalition, a Microsoft Studio, is the first company to license the groundbreaking software, animating over 35,000 lines of dialogue in the critically acclaimed game Gears of War 4.
Michael Berger, CTO and co-founder of Speech Graphics, said: “Automatic, accurate lip sync is one of the holy grails of computer facial animation. Our task is to create the impression that the animated face you see is the source of the sound you hear. This illusion is notoriously difficult to achieve: the movements of speech are fast, complex and subtle and the viewer is highly sensitive to any mismatch between face and the voice.
David Coleman, Animation Director of Gears of War 4, added: “Speech Graphics provided us with a robust system for automatically creating quality facial animation for the many thousands of lines of gameplay dialogue in Gears of War 4. We found the people at Speech Graphics to be very responsive and helpful in us achieving our goals.
“SGX goes beyond good lip sync. Speech contains energy and emotion, and that too can be decoded from the voice and synchronized in the face. Using all available acoustic information, our algorithms drive not just the mouth but the entire face from audio input, from syllables to scowls.”
SGX has also been licensed to a further three global studios, more details on these are expected in the new year.
