An open source engine for embodied animated agents

This paper presents a powerful animation engine, called Maxine, to develop applications with embodied animated agents. The engine, based on open source tools, allows the management of scenes and virtual characters, and allows multimodal and emotional interaction with the users. The virtual actors are provided with facial expressions, lyp-synch, emotional voice, and can vary their answers depending on their emotional state and on the relationship with the user along the conversation. Maxine virtual agents have been used as virtual presenters in several applications: MaxinePPT is an specific application, developed to allow non-programmers to create 3D presentations easily from classical PowerPoint presentations; a virtual character was used as an interactive interface to communicate and control a domotic environment; and finally, an interactive pedagogical agent was used to simplify and improve teaching and practice of Computer Graphics subjects.