Products
aPeerance SDK products provide a simple but complete solution for integrating
sophisticated facial character technology into any program. The SDK products
are powered by aPeerance's unique facial animation technology, FaceScript™.
While the SDK products produce the impression of highly sophisticated
character animation, the run-time components are implemented with lightweight
algorithms, to provide real-time performance with minimal impact on other
functions of the host application. aPeerance's mission is to make sophisticated
facial characters easily available to any application designer.
The purpose of GameFace™ SDK is to allow interactive applications that
use agents and characters to include very life-like and dramatic facial
animation. GameFace SDK includes an authoring system for the off-line
creation of characters. Behaviors can then be created for these characters,
either as simple key-framed animations (smiles, winks, nods, yawns, etc.)
or as personalities that define how the character will respond to a stream
of voice data. Voice analysis tools with real-time feedback are provided
to create dialog animations that include lip-synching and other facial
animations relating to speech. The GameFace run-time component can be
easily integrated into your application to realize all this content at
run-time. The FaceScript™ system allows you to mix animations, voice-streams
and behaviors at any time, in any combination and with any character,
allowing maximum flexibility and re-use of your content assets.
The best way to describe the power of the GameFace system is with an example.
An adventure game may require a Spy character. The designer would create
the face and head for the Spy in the GameFace authoring system by adjusting
low level parameters until the character had just the slim gaunt face
with a shifty slant to the eyes. Scars and other highlights are added
in the character's texture map. The Spy character has to deliver various
pieces of dialog to the player, some of which must be delivered nervously
and others slyly. The designer could create a sly mood (with solid eye-contact
and smooth, shifty gestures) and a nervous mood (with darting glances,
rapid blinking and jerky motions). The voice talent records the speeches
and the GameFace authoring system analyzes them for lip-syncing and inflection.
With the GameFace run-time integrated into the game engine, the spy character
can be made to play back any of the speeches with either the sly or nervous
mood, as determined by the game logic. The Spy's face will lip-sync to
the words and respond to the inflections, using whatever mood is specified
at run-time. If a new Spy is introduced into the story line, with different
speeches and voice talent, the same sly and nervous moods could be used
to accent the new character's performances. Individual facial expressions
(smiles, frowns, ticks, etc.) can be created, stored as libraries and
overlaid on top of the speeches at run-time, under program control. For
example, a player may perform some action in the middle of a Spy's speech,
causing him to be displeased and frown or to be surprised and look startled.
In short, the player's interaction with the Spy characters can be varied,
subtle and life-like to whatever extent the designer desires.
Features:
· Full-featured authoring
o Character authoring/editing
o Behavior definition
tools
o Off-line speech analysis
for lip-sync and other speech behaviors
o Real-time feedback of
run-time behavior
o Imports 3D Studio Max™
data
· Easy integration
o Works in conjunction
with any rendering system or game engine.
o Layered implementation
allows black-box inclusion into your
software and/or access to lower-level interfaces
GameTalk™ SDK enables game developers to add a valuable layer of user-interactivity
to their games. A GameTalk-enabled game allows players to communicate
with each other as their in-game characters, using their voices and animated
with a full range of facial expression. This expression includes real-time
lip-syncing, emotion, blinking and other effects to give the character
a powerful illusion of life, all powered by the same animation engine
present in the GameFace SDK.
GameTalk SDK provides game developers with a great deal of flexibility
in creating the desired look in the game. For example, a talking head
could appear in an inset window in the main window of a sports or real-time
strategy game or in the heads-up display of a first-person shooter or
role-playing game or in the dashboard of a racing or flight simulation
title. Alternatively, the talking emoting face could be integrated with
the model representing the character within the game world. The SDK is
implemented in such a way that addition of these features into an existing
code base requires minimal extra logic. At the same time, access to lower-level
functionality is available when finer control is desirable.
Features:
GameTalk SDK provides all the power of the GameFace SDK with the following
additions -
· Full-featured communication suite.
o Fully articulated lip-synced
avatar.
o Voice over IP with 3D
positioning and distance-attenuation
o Better-than-telephony
voice-quality.
· Web-enabled
o ActiveX/plug-in with
JavaScript interfaces available for
integration into web interfaces.
aPeer™ SDK is a high-level interface for algorithmically generating characters
under program control. Since the FaceScriptä system allows for the creation
of virtually any character by manipulating a set of parameters, high-quality
characters can be generated at run-time by the computer, as opposed to
being created offline by a designer. For most applications, this process
should be constrained within a reasonable range. For example, a game might
require the creation of a random Thug character, where a Thug is defined
as someone with brutish features. aPeer SDK provides an intuitive way
to describe the family of Thugs as a collection of target characters and
rules for combining the characteristics of those targets to create never-before-seen
instances of Thug characters. In conjunction with GameFace SDK, these
newly created characters could come to life and begin interacting with
the player.
Another application for aPeer SDK would be to present an interface to
the user for choosing an in-game character, within game constraints. A
game designer could create canonical target characters and present the
user with a way to surf the virtually infinite space of characters that
lie between and in the vicinity of the targets. Thus, a multi-player game
involving Pirates for example could use aPeerä SDK to define a wide range
of faces that had characteristics that subjectively suggest a Pirate.
The user could search this space for a unique instance of a Pirate for
use as an avatar and GameTalk SDK could be used to connect the community
of Pirates.
aPeer SDK unleashes the full potential of the FaceScript system by allowing
for the creation of fresh, unique and surprising new characters, while
still allowing the application designer as much control of the process
as desired.