Angel Studio

Generator of Personalized Avatars

The development of an avatar generator that uses photos and voice samples is central to the Angel Studio Project. The photos and voice samples for a specific user are used to create a realistic 3D avatar face, with a synthesized voice with parametric possibilities.

The scientific objective of the project is to be able to reproduce the facial and vocal movements of a user with a level of simulation acceptable for users. The commercial objective of the project is to include this generator in solutions developed by two small businesses taking part in the project: As An Angel and SoBuzzy. The  development of the conversational agent market, as well as that of Web3D, has come up against the challenge of what end-users accept.

Numerous projects and studies, especially those carried out by As An Angel (e.g. Project Agent Conversationnel Expressif), the Laboratoire informatique de Grenoble (ex CLIPS), and the HUMAINE network have demonstrated this level of acceptance that can vary from one culture to another but remains relatively high. User expectations - modeled by writing, cinema, and science fiction - correspond to a plausible human imitation, both in terms of the capacity to converse and to the representation and animation of an artificial face and body. The Angel Studio project therefore aims at creating conversational agents or avatars that meet users' standards for two means of communication:

• Expressive facial animation of 'photo-realistic' faces
• Plausible simulation of an expressive human voice.

IRCAM will develop and provide the conversion algorithms for the identity of the voice, the transformation algorithms for the expressivity of the voice, sentences synthesized from text (TTS) by a system that is on the market, or a propriety IRCAM system (Ircam TTS).

Project Details

Participants