New Tool Generates Facial Animation From Audio Files

LIPSinc announced the launch of LIPSinc Impersonator, a software tool that creates facial animation data files for talking characters by using a voice file of any language as the only input. The animation data files are interpreted by the game engine at runtime and played in synch with the audio, generating the proper lip, mouth, and jaw motions on-the-fly. LIPSinc Impersonator also has a character-rigging plug-in for various animation software packages like max and Maya, so that you can construct bones- or morph-based characters. The company hopes to reduce the time it takes to manually lip-sync a voice with animated characters, and to make it easier for game developers to localize their game titles for foreign markets. Pricing was not disclosed.