Apparatuses, methods and storage medium associated with animating and rendering an avatar are disclosed herein. In embodiments, an apparatus may include a facial expression and speech tracker to respectively receive a plurality of image frames and audio of a user, and analyze the image frames and the audio to determine and track facial expressions and speech of the user. The tracker may further select a plurality of blend shapes, including assignment of weights of the blend shapes, for animating the avatar, based on tracked facial expressions or speech of the user. The tracker may select the plurality of blend shapes, including assignment of weights of the blend shapes, based on the tracked speech of the user, when visual conditions for tracking facial expressions of the user are determined to be below a quality threshold. Other embodiments may be disclosed and/or claimed.
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