[Philip Lelyveld comment: the brief video at the link is pretty amazing and worth checking out.]

[VentureBeat]

…Now, U.K.-based startupSpeech Graphics wants to revolutionize audio-driven animation through new software that uniquely predicts how the muscles of the human face move to produce sounds.

The new lip synching technology uses just audio input to automatically make a 3D character speak. Since it uses a universal physics model, the company says it will work across all languages, saving game development time and resources.

An award-winning team from the University of Edinburgh’s School of Informatics and the Centre for Speech Technology Research, Speech Graphics co-founders Michael Berger and Dr. Gregor Hofer have a combined 20 years of experience in speech technology and animation. They say they created their new software in response to the rising quantity and cost of spoken dialogue in today’s story-driven video games, such as BioWare’s recently released massively multiplayer online role-playing game Star Wars: The Old Republic (SW:TOR). SW:TOR, which contains 260,000 lines of voiced dialogue in three languages, reportedly cost nearly $200 million to develop. …

See the full story here: http://venturebeat.com/2012/02/09/lip-synch-tech-to-revolutionize-motion-capture/