[Philippe]

Hi,

When using vizact.speak, it is very difficult to have the Avatar speaking in a natural manner. When setting the two following parameters:

Scale =
Threshold =

we managed to set "Scale" in a satisfactory manner, but we had troubles finding something appropriate for the "Threshold". If we set it high, there were parts of the speech where the Avatar did not open its lips. If we set it low, then there were non natural movements of the lips appearing when the lips should hardly move or not move at all.

What is the best way to make the Avatar speaking in a natural manner? Is the use of vizard.speak method the only way, or is there a more sophisticated method? Which is the best morph to use? I guess the quality of the recording of the sound file is important, but to what extent? Are there any tips concerning the sound file recording (speaking loudly in the microphone, use a certain type of microphone, format of the audio file, etc.)? We noticed that some types of voice gave better results than others. What is the current usage – taking some samples, and then trying different morphs to see how it best fits?
Even when the movement was acceptable and gave some approximation of a real environment, it still was quite mechanical – all what we could control was to what extent the mouth opens (Scale) and the sensitivity to sound amplitude (Threshold). Are there other methods giving more control on the movement of the lips - not only open/close and amplitude? Is there some utility which can enable us to match the movement of the lips to the International Phonetic Alphabet? Finally: are there plans to improve vizard.speak method in the foreseeable future?

Thanks.