Virtual characters are an important part of many 3D graphical simulations. In entertainment or training applications, virtual characters might be one of the main mechanisms for creating and developing content and scenarios. In such applications the user may need to interact with a number of different characters that need to invoke specific responses in the user, so that the user interprets the scenario in the way that the designer intended. Whilst representations of virtual characters have come a long way in recent years, interactive virtual characters tend to be a bit “wooden” with respect to their perceived behaviour. In this STAR we give an overview of work on expressive virtual characters. In particular, we assume that a virtual character representation is already available, and we describe a variety of models and methods that are used to give the characters more “depth” so that they are less wooden and more plausible. We cover models of individual characters’ emotion and personality, models of interpersonal behaviour and methods for generating expression.

/pdf/building-expression-into-virtual-characters-3i1pjvmriu.pdf

Building Expression into Virtual Characters

One of the challenges of designing virtual humans is the definition of appropriate models of the relation between realistic emotions and the coordination of behaviors in several modalities. In this paper, we present the annotation, representation and modeling of multimodal visual behaviors occurring during complex emotions. We illustrate our work using a corpus of TV interviews. This corpus has been annotated at several levels of information: communicative acts, emotion labels, and multimodal signs. We have defined a copy-synthesis approach to drive an Embodied Conversational Agent from these different levels of information. The second part of our paper focuses on a model of complex (superposition and masking of) emotions in facial expressions of the agent. We explain how the complementary aspects of our work on corpus and computational model is used to specify complex emotional behaviors.

/pdf/multimodal-complex-emotions-gesture-expressivity-and-blended-42pt8f2ith.pdf

Multimodal complex emotions: gesture expressivity and blended facial expressions

An expressive ECA showing complex emotions

The aim of this paper is to describe some theoretical considerations about virtual character design. In recent years, many prototypes of cognitive and behavioral architectures have been developed to simulate human behavior in artificial agents. Analyzing recent studies, we assume that there exists a variety of computational models and methods in order to increase the cognitive abilities of the virtual characters. In our opinion, it is necessary to perform a synthesis of these approaches in order to improve the existing models and avoiding the application of new approaches. Considering these aspects, in this paper we describe a taxonomy that explores the principal cognitive and computational parameters involved in the design, development and evaluation of a virtual character.

/pdf/conceptual-design-scheme-for-virtual-characters-2r8017uzxr.pdf

Conceptual Design Scheme for Virtual Characters

Over the last years, there has been a lot of interest in the area of Interactive Virtual Humans
(IVHs) Virtual characters who interact naturally with users in mixed realities have many different
applications, such as interactive video games, virtual training and rehabilitation, or virtual
heritage The main purpose of using interactive virtual humans in such applications is to increase
the realism of the environment by adding life-like characters The means by which these
characters perceive their environment and how they express themselves greatly influences how
convincing these characters are The work presented in this thesis aims to improve the expressive
capabilities of virtual characters, notably the animation of IVHs
Because of the complexity of interaction, a high level of control is required over the face
and body motions of the virtual humans In order to achieve this, current approaches try to
generate face and body motions from a high-level description Although this indeed allows for
a precise control over the movement of the virtual human, it is difficult to generate a naturallooking
motion from such a high-level description Another problem that arises when animating
IVHs is that motions are not generated all the time Therefore a flexible animation scheme is
required that ensures a natural posture even when no animation is playing Finally, because
of the many different components that an Interactive Virtual Human consists of, the animation
model should be as efficient as possible
In this thesis, we will present a new animation model, based on a combination of motion
synthesis from motion capture and a statistical analysis of prerecorded motion clips As opposed
to existing approaches that create new motions with limited flexibility, our model adapts existing
motions, by automatically adding dependent joint motions This renders the animation more
natural, but since our model does not impose any conditions on the input motion, it can be
linked easily with existing gesture synthesis techniques for IVHs
In order to assure a continuous realistic motion, a basic layer of motions, called idle motions,
is always present These motions are generated by sequencing prerecorded motion segments
organised in a graph The path followed through this graph is controlled by high-level
constraints, such as an emotional state On top of that, small variations in posture are added so
that the character is never static Because we use a linear representation for joint orientations,
blending and interpolation is done very efficiently, resulting in an animation engine especially
suitable for real-time applications

Real-time Animation of Interactive Virtual Humans

In this paper, we present an integrated method of linking personality and emotion with the
response generation and expression synthesis of Virtual Humans. The characters are powered
by a dialogue system that consists of a large set of basic interactions between user and computer.
These interactions are encoded in finite state machines. Transitions are linked with conditions
and actions that can be connected with external modules. One of these modules is a personality
module. In this way, responses of the virtual human depend not only on input given by a user,
but also on its personality and emotional state. The dialogue system is connected to a 3D face
that performs the speech and facial animation, together with facial expressions that reflect the
personality specification.

/pdf/imparting-individuality-to-virtual-humans-nncms38j4d.pdf

Imparting Individuality to Virtual Humans

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Imparting Individuality to Virtual Humans