SL Web Face

A library for animating faces on the web. It uses a web canvas for rendering.

Features

• Animate faces to show 11 emotions, lid levels, blinking, eye attention, and speaking.
• Faces are configured as a combination of individual parts including head, eyes, and mouth.
• Skin, hair, and eyes can be recolored at load-time.
• Playback of speech audio with lip animation (visemes) timed to match audio.
• Face configuration can be loaded from web-hosted files.
• Extensible to create new face parts with different art assets.

Usage

Here's some basic code for loading a face and rendering it continuously to a canvas.

import { loadFaceFromUrl } from "sl-web-face";

let canvasContext, face;

async function init() {
  // Need a canvas element with this ID in your DOM.
  const canvas = window.getElementById('theCanvas');
  if (!canvas) throw Error('Could not find canvas in the DOM.');
  canvasContext = canvas.getContext('2d');
  face = await loadFaceFromUrl('https://example.com/yourfaceconf.yml');
  requestAnimationFrame(renderCanvas);
}

function renderCanvas() {
  canvasContext.clearRect(0, 0, context.canvas.width, context.canvas.height);
  face.render(canvasContext, 0, 0);
  requestAnimationFrame(render);
}

init();

How to animate? You can use the FaceEventManager.

import { loadFaceFromUrl, FaceEventManager, Viseme, Emotion, LidLevel } from 'sl-web-face';

...all the code from first example...

const JERRY_FACE_ID = 1; // Unique ID for this face.
const eventManager = new FaceEventManager();
eventManager.bindFacee(face, JERRY_FACE_ID);

eventManager.blink(JERRY_FACE_ID); // Blink once.
eventManager.setAttention(JERRY_FACE_ID, 0, 1); // Look down.
eventManager.setEmotion(JERRY_FACE_ID, Emotion.HAPPY); // Be happy.
eventManager.setLidLevel(JERRY_FACE_ID, LidLevel.SQUINT); // Squint.
eventManager.setViseme(JERRY_FACE_ID, Viseme.O); // Make an O face.

Some idle eye movements including blinking and looking around can be performed automatically with controllers.

import { loadFaceFromUrl, publishEvent, BlinkController, AttentionController } from 'sl-web-face';

...all the code from first example...

const JERRY_FACE_ID = 1; // Unique ID for this face.
const eventManager = new FaceEventManager();
eventManager.bindFacee(face, JERRY_FACE_ID);

let blinkController, attentionController;

function startIdleEyeMovements() {
  blinkController = new BlinkController(eventManager, JERRY_FACE_ID);
  attentionController = new AttentionController(eventManager, JERRY_FACE_ID);
  blinkController.start();
  attentionController.start();
}

You can play an audio file with timed lip animations (visemes) if you have a .wav and corresponding .lipz file. Or a WISP-generated .wav file that embeds lip animation timings.

import { loadFaceFromUrl, publishEvent, loadSpeechFromUrl } from 'sl-web-face';

...all the code from first example...

const JERRY_FACE_ID = 1; // Unique ID for this face.
const eventManager = new FaceEventManager();
eventManager.bindFacee(face, JERRY_FACE_ID);

async function saySomething() {
  const speechAudio = await loadSpeechFromUrl('https://example.com/dialogue.wav'); // Will look for a file called dialogue.lipz.txt at the same location.
  speechAudio.setSpeakingFace(eventManager, JERRY_FACE_ID);
  speechAudio.play(); // Plays audio and animates lips.
}

Web-Hosted Files for Faces

These would include the art assets for face and mouth, configuration files, audio files and lipz files.

I'll put them up on a public location a bit later. It's possible I'll open-source a web app from a different repo that includes them. Or I may do something else slightly different to make them available.

Contributing

The project isn't open to contributions at this point. But that could change. Contact me if you'd like to collaborate.

Contacting

You can reach me on LinkedIn. I'll accept connections if you will just mention "SL Web Face" or some other shared interest in your connection request.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/erikhermansen/