Patent ID: 8725507

Claim:
A method for animating virtual faces/heads/characters via voice processing in a portable device, the method comprising: processing information associated with setup, a user setting, and/or a user preference; processing, acquiring, or analyzing audio information associated with the portable device; performing voice, sound, or vowel recognition of the audio information by generating a plurality of audio frames based on the audio information; calculating a maximum energy among the plurality of audio frames; synthesizing facial expressions as a function of the audio information; recognizing Dual-Tone Multi-Frequency (DTMF) tone information for use in animation of head/facial expressions; joining the synthesized expressions and the recognized information together to determine relevant animation features; generating facial animation parameters as a function of the information joined; and animating a virtual head/face/character by modifying features thereof as a function of the generated facial animation parameters, wherein a ratio of the maximum energy and an energy of a current frame is used to control a size of a virtual mouth opening.