Introduction

Vuppetmaster

Vuppetmaster is a 3D real time animation software and enables the usage of interactive avatars as virtual assistants or guides in many kinds of applications. The Charamel Vuppetmaster software is a server sided platform for hosting and authoring avatars and its resources on the one side and a new JavaScript render engine for browsers on the client-side. Vuppetmaster is running on desktop browsers and on mobile browsers. We ensure that Vuppetmaster runs on the four main browser Firefox, Chrome, Edge and Safari. Continuous testing ensures that Vuppetmaster always runs on the newest version of the mentioned browsers.

The behaviour, actions and reactions of the avatars are defined by control commands comparable to scripts for real actors. These “scripts” have a special JSON syntax. In general, they specify which motions the avatar has to do, what it has to say and how it should react to user’s actions. Implementation of an avatar into websites is quite easy by using JavaScript. Also React and AngularJS frameworks can be used for Vuppetmaster integration.

The speech of the avatar can be realized by the usage of server-sided Text-To-Speech (TTS) system of different TTS-suppliers. Currently Nuance TTS (German and English) and all Amazon Polly Voices (http://docs.aws.amazon.com/polly/latest/dg/voicelist.html) are available.

Storybuilder

Storybuilder is an authoring tool to create tutorials.