An Efficient Parametric Model for Real-Time 3D Tongue Skeletal Animation

In this paper, we propose a very efficient novel parametric model to describe the surface and structure of the human tongue and a corresponding mathematical model for performing 3D tongue animation. A skeletal chain of virtual bones is automatically generated depending on the geometric features of the 3D object, allowing each tongue segment to be easily manipulated by its corresponding parameters, thus leading to a very eye-pleasant and anatomically correct tongue animation. We also provide a very useful non-linear falloff method for defining the bone influence over its surrounding vertices and a novel mathematical model for performing the skeletal chain transformations with minimal tongue volume variation. Tongue animation is a key task for all visible speech researchers and is highly helpful to describe speech production and the articulation of phonemes.