Expressive virtual characters for social demonstration games

Virtual characters are an integral part of many game and learning environments and have practical applications as tutors, demonstrators or even representations of the user. However, creating virtual character behaviors can be a time-consuming and complex task requiring substantial technical expertise. To accelerate and better enable the use of virtual characters in social games, we present a virtual character behavior toolkit for the development of expressive virtual characters. It is a midlleware toolkit which sits on top of the game engine with a focus on providing high-level character behaviors to quickly create social games. The toolkit can be adapted to a wide range of scenarios related to social interactions with individuals and groups at multiple distances in the virtual environment and supports customization and control of facial expressions, body animations and group formations. We describe the design of the toolkit, providing an examplar of a small game that is being created with it and our intended future work on the system.

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