Rapport and Speech Graphics 2024 - Q1 Review

29 Mar

Blog from Michael Berger, Co-founder & CTO, and Gregor Hofer, Co-founder & CEO

It seems like only yesterday that we wrote our round-up of 2023, but so much has happened since then, it’s time once again to bring you up to speed! In the first quarter of 2024, our team has been all over the world, representing Rapport and Speech Graphics at international conferences and events.

Rapport has launched some brilliant new projects, including creating a multilingual digital assistant for KDDI and a Digital Twin for DJ Jazzy Jeff! Meanwhile, Speech Graphics has been named one of Europe’s fastest-growing companies by the FT and continues to win awards and international recognition!

Below you can learn about some of the highlights of the year so far!

Rapport

Digital Twin for DJ Jazzy Jeff

In one of our most high-profile projects to date, the legendary producer behind hits like 'Summertime' and 'Gettin' Jiggy Wit It' - DJ Jazzy Jeff - has used Rapport to create a Digital Twin. Launched at SXSW as part of the Creators Union 'Love of Da Game' initiative, Jazzy's avatar will act as a mentor, providing advice and insights on music business strategies and production techniques - accessible 24x7 to his audience. Rapport’s Sheri Bryant took part in a panel at SXSW, where DJ Jazzy Jeff was blown away by his Digital Twin’s responses to audience questions! Read more about the launch here.

Left to right: Olumide Akinwande - Founder of Montech Studios Inc, James Andrews - Founder of Creator Mode Studios, Parisa Rose - Director of Client Relationships & Community Growth at Creator Mode Studios, DJ Jazzy Jeff, Sheri Bryant - Rapport Business Strategist

Multilingual demo for KDDI

In another big project, the Rapport team developed a multilingual demo for Japanese telecom operator, KDDI, to showcase at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. The demo was a collaboration with Google, using Gemini AI and Google’s TTS software, and it gives responses in English, Japanese, and Spanish. Our CEO, Gregor Hofer, was in Barcelona for the launch presentation, you can watch a video of the demo in action below.

New website with demos and use cases

In January we released the new Rapport website making some of our demos publicly available for the first time! You can now chat with Vivian, our AI-powered Metahuman, or try out our e-commerce demo, where our virtual Gold Medalist will walk you through the final step of customizing some sneakers. You can also see a number of other case studies and testimonials here.

Speech Graphics

Remnant 2

In February we released our Remnant 2 case study which included some flattering testimonials from the team at Gunfire Games. Speech Graphics’ SGX, our best-in-class procedural animation software, was used to animate 14 characters taking all sorts of forms, including a 14-foot tall, Root-infested Wolf creature, complete with 10 eyes, featured in the video below!

“After completing the Remnant: From the Ashes, we recognized a critical gap in the quality of our product, our facial animations were lackluster, and they didn't mirror the caliber of our voice actors. That's where Speech Graphics came in. This software not only elevated our facial animations to match our exceptional voice talent, but it also empowered us to scale seamlessly.” - Chris Mead, Animation Director at Gunfire Games

Check out the full case study here.

80.lvl Articles

At the start of the year, we published three articles in 80.lvl. The first dived into how Squanch Games used SGX for their game High On Life. Nathan Griffin, Gameplay Programmer at Squanch Games, described SGX as "by far the best facial animation generation from all the systems we tested." Read the full article here.

The second article, by Gregor Hofer, delved into how audio-driven facial animation compares with other industry-leading animation solutions and includes our new multilingual demo video (below). Read that article here.

The third article, by Michael Berger, looked at how SGX not only produces animation but also exposes a rich tapestry of metadata, including emotional cues and other information extracted from speech. This feature enhances character interactions in gaming, enabling game developers to imbue characters and game logic with a level of context-awareness never seen before. Check that article out here.

International Recognition

Speech Graphics celebrated Chinese New Year by taking home the "Dragon Award for Pioneering Spirit" at the China-Scotland Business Awards! The award recognizes how Speech Graphics has successfully deepened its connections between China and Scotland, notably establishing a partnership with GrowthEase, a leading provider of enterprise technology solutions in China. Full article and more photos here.

Events

Past events

As mentioned above, our team has been all across the world for a variety of conferences and events! The Rapport team started the year at “the most powerful tech event in the world,” CES in Las Vegas. We were then in London for the BETT UK EdTech Summit. However, the highlights of the year so far for Rapport were: exhibiting and showing off our demos at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona (read our summary here) and launching the DJ Jazzy Jeff Digital Twin at SXSW in Austin, Texas, more on that here.

The big event for Speech Graphics so far has been exhibiting at GDC in San Francisco where a contingent was sent to show off our latest SGX and SG Com demos. The new SG Com demo showed how both speaking and listening characters could be animated from a single audio track in real time! The output matches the intensity and intonation patterns of the speech. It detects the emotional valence in the voice to produce corresponding facial expressions and responds to nonverbal events such as laughter, effort sounds, and coughs. It also detects breaths and animates the breath cycle, along with head motion, eye blinks, and saccades. We will be releasing more about that soon!

Upcoming Events

Japan IT Week, Tokyo, 24th - 26th April. Rapport exhibiting

The MarTech Summit, London, 15th May. Rapport attending
Digital Dragons, Krakow, 19th - 21st May. Speech Graphics attending
GTMF, 28th June, Osaka, 9th July, Tokyo, Speech Graphics & Rapport exhibiting
Content Tokyo, 3rd - 5th July, Tokyo, Rapport exhibiting

Thanks for taking the time to catch up on all things Rapport and Speech Graphics! Contact us if you want to learn more about our work.

Ellen Grieve