ICYMI - Speech Graphics Wows at GDC 2023
Making Real Connections
GDC returned last month for its second in-person event in a row - with over 28,000 registered attendees taking to the Moscone Centre floor to learn about the latest and greatest in games development. Speech Graphics was one of over 330 exhibitors, and we were thrilled to be meeting thousands of like-minded industry professionals.
“There was a genuine sense of community that would form around a shared sense of fascination for all things innovative; which is the magic that brings so many of us into the industry” - James Scott, CXO
Lots of Laughs
In addition to two demo stations showcasing the latest version of our award-winning offline production software - SGX - we also unveiled our new SG Com real-time demo at the booth. This gave visitors the opportunity to drive not only a speaking character, but also the reactions of a listening character using only their voice - either a scene featuring MetaHumans, or a scene with Anime characters.
In the default setting, detecting positivity and negativity in the voice would trigger happy and sad expressions in both the speaker's and the listener’s faces, along with accurate lip-sync for the speaker. However, in other settings, positive detectors could be mapped to surprised or even manic expressions, while negativity could trigger angry or fearful expressions. The immediacy of this opportunity to move beyond simple idle states for listening characters to automatically generate appropriate animation based on their relationship with the speaking character, in real-time, was a great source of humor and excitement for onlookers and participants alike. Especially because in addition to emotional detection, the system also recognizes and reflects non-verbal behavior, such as effort/grunting, laughing and sighing.
Putting Our Body Into It!
Check out our GDC highlight reel!
Another aspect of the SG Com demo that surprised people, was that gestures and body movement could also be triggered by the audio input. For example, if suitably enamored with the speaker, the listening character might make a heart symbol with their hands. Or if the speaker was particularly angry, the character would shake their fists.
“I love that we had an interactive demo this year. Showcasing how to generate high quality facial animation using the latest version of our offline batch processing software (SGX) is exciting enough, but seeing people’s faces light up in amazement when they would take the mic and puppeteer the characters with our new SG Com real-time demo was completely joyous! ”
If you’d like to share any pictures or videos of your time at the Speech Graphics booth, remember to tag us on socials!
Until Next Time!
Thank you to everyone who came to our booth, and who made this GDC so enjoyable. We can’t wait to see you at next year's GDC! In the meantime, let's continue the conversation on how we can help you achieve the highest quality animation from audio.
