Animated Face

[NotAnotherNun]

Hey buds, i jus found irrlicht and its amazing (granted i have never really used any other 3d code before, but still). I was hoping some one here could help me with something. Im working on a little project with a media friend, and I want to try and make a 3D News Presenter. I have created (in 3D Studio) a 3D Studio. I havn't modelled the presenter/presenters yet, but this is where I need help:

I want to have the face (mainly the mouth) of the news presenter to be animated to look likes he's speaking. I have a good text to speech engine, but it lacks the speaking to be "cooler". I've seen it done in games and was wondering if anyone knew how to do it in irrlicht.

Thanks,
Chris

[NotAnotherNun]

Oh, I should probably add that the syncronisation doesn't matter at all, I just want it to be close so when he's speaking, it moves around, but when he's stopped, so has the mouth.

Chris

[MasterM]

well you need to work with animations/frames, when the sound starts the frame loops and when the sound stops the frame looping stops...but i think to know if the sound is playing or not you need a sound engine.

[rogerborg]

To be honest, Irrlicht doesn't have (any?) built in tools to assist with this task. Ogre3D has some tools for facial animation, so might be a better bet. Of course, you'd be very welcome to extend Irrlicht, or to let us know how to do it.

[NotAnotherNun]

Thanks for your responses, ill have a play around and see if I can take some ideas from Ogre3D and implement it. Hopefully be back soon!

Chris

[hybrid]

Of course facial animation is only necessary if you need a HQ lip syncing. Otherwise just do as MaterM advised and use special animations which do the moving together with mouth movement.