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A critical part of animating a sign language using virtual avatar is to display a sign
gesture having multiple rotational arm poses to identify a word instead of a single
static arm pose. Sequencing a group of gestures related to a sentence requires each
gesture in the middle of a sentence to be animated using different initial arm
positions. Sequencing pre-captured arm videos, ordering preset animations compiled
by 3D animations, and ordering motion capture data are the widely used techniques
used by sign language animators presently. The transition from one word to another is
not smooth as the initial and the terminating positions of each animation is not the
same. This paper presents a technique with smooth transitions between gestures to
animate a sign language. A sequencing technique is also presented to animate known
words using gestures that are already defined and also to animate unknown words
using character-to-character sign animation. New sentences are dynamically added in
real-time and the system will adjust the animation list automatically by appending the
required animations of the words in the new sentence to the end of the playlist.
Results indicate an average distance of 3.81 pixels for 27 static pose finger spelling
characters.
