TDA: a new trainable trajectory formation system for facial animation

A new trainable trajectory formation system for facial animation is here proposed that dissociates parametric spaces and methods for movement planning and execution. Movement planning is achieved by HMM-based trajectory formation. Movement execution is performed by concatenation of multi-represented diphones. Movement planning ensures that the essential visual characteristics of visemes are reached (lip closing for bilabials, rounding and opening for palatal fricatives, etc) and that appropriate coarticulation is planned. Movement execution grafts phonetic details and idiosyncratic articulatory strategies (dissymetries, importance of jaw movements, etc) to the planned gestural score.