With evolution in computer and mobile networking technologies comes the challenge of offering novel and complex multimedia applications and end-user services in heterogeneous environments for both developers and service providers. This paper describes one novel service, called LiveMail that explores the potential of existing face animation technologies for innovative and attractive services intended for the mobile market. This prototype service allows mobile subscribers to communicate using personalized 3D face models created from images taken by their phone cameras. The user can take a snapshot of someone's face – a friend, famous person, themselves, even a pet – using the mobile phone's camera. After a quick manipulation on the phone, a 3D model of that face is created and can be animated simply by typing in some text. Speech and appropriate animation of the face are created automatically by speech synthesis. Furthermore, these highly personalized animations can be sent to others as real 3D animated messages or as short videos in MMS. The clients were implemented on different platforms, and different network and face animation techniques, and connected into one complex system. This paper presents the architecture and experience gained in building such a system.

LiveMail is a prototype system that allows mobile subscribers to communicate using personalized 3D face models created from images taken by their phone cameras. The user takes a snapshot of someone's face -a friend, famous person, themselves, even a pet -using the mobile phone's camera. After a quick manipulation on the phone, a 3D model of that face is created and can be animated simply by typing in some text. Speech and appropriate animation of the face are created automatically by speech synthesis. Animations can be sent to others as real 3D animated messages or as short videos in MMS. They can be used as fun messages, greeting cards etc. The system is based on a client/server communication model. The clients are mobile devices or web clients so messages can be created, sent and received on the mobile phone or on a web page. The client has a user interface that allows the user to input a facial image and place a simple mask on it to mark the main features. The client then sends this data to a server that builds a personalized face model. The client also provides an interface that lets the user request the creation of animated messages using speech synthesis. It is planned to have several versions of the client: Symbian, midletbased, web-based, wap-based, etc. The server is responsible for sending messages adjusted to the capabilities of the receiving platform. The server, Symbian client, midlet-based client and the web client have been implemented as prototypes. We present the system architecture and the experience gained building LiveMail.