Tools for populating cultural heritage environments with interactive virtual humans, open digital cultural heritage systems

Modern 3D VR systems rely heavily on the interplay of heterogeneous technologies. Because of this inherently interdisciplinary character, VR domain can be viewed as a melting pot of various technologies which although complementary are non-trivial to put together. Frameworks can be used to address this challenge as they offer advantages such as reusability of components, as well as easiness of replacements, extensions, and adaptations. Hence, this paper presents developments within the EPOCH project, in particular the Characterize NEWTON, to improve and release frameworks that support the incorporation of avatars in interactive real-time 3D VR systems. The purpose is to enable avatars to be interactive and to react to model metadata; thus adding realism and engaging the user’s interest. This vertical middleware offers the advantage to be based on open source generic frameworks, such as OpenScenegraph and OpenSG as well as offering complementary functionalities.