Page History
...
The ICT Virtual Human Toolkit is a collection of modules, tools, and libraries designed to aid and support users and developers with the creation of virtual human conversational characters. The Toolkit is an on-going, ever-changing, innovative system fueled by basic research performed at the University of Southern California (USC) Institute for Creative Technologies (ICT) and its partners.
Designed for easy mixing and matching with a research project’s proprietary or 3rd-party software, the Toolkit provides a widely accepted platform on which new technologies can be built. It is our hope that, together as a research community, we can further develop and explore virtual human technologies. The Virtual Human Toolkit can be licensed (License Agreement) without cost for academic research purposes. Please contact us if you are interested in a commercial license.
...
- Jul 11 2012 - We have released a minor update to the toolkit, fixing some usability and stability issues. See Release Notes for details.
- May 31 2012 - An exciting new version of the toolkit is now available, offering the MultiSense framework, the Rapport research platform and the SBMonitor tool. MultiSense is a perception framework that enables multiple sensing and understanding modules to inter-operate simultaneously, broadcasting data through the Perception Markup Language. MultiSense currently contains GAVAM, CLM FaceTracker and FAAST which you can use with webcam or Kinect. The Rapport agent is a “virtual human listener” providing nonverbal feedback based on human nonverbal and verbal input. It has been used in a variety of international studies related to establishing rapport between real and virtual humans. Finally, the SBMonitor is a stand-alone tool for easy debugging of SmartBody applications, including testing available (facial) animations, gazes and more complex BML commands.
- Mar 2 2012 - A minor release of the toolkit is now available, updating the Unity version to 3.5 as well as providing incremental changes to the Unity/SmartBody debug tools in the Unity Editor (VH menu in Unity).
- Dec 22 2011 - Happy holidays! The latest release of the toolkit includes the ability to interrupt Brad, improved support for higher resolutions, and a fix for text-to-speech not working properly. See Release Notes for details.
...
Our research has led to the creation of ground-breaking technologies which we have coupled with other software components to form a complete embodied conversational agent. All ICT virtual human software is built on top of a common, modular architecture which allows Toolkit users to do any of the following:
...
Our on-going, ever-evolving Toolkit is not comprised of finished, state-of-the-art technologies. Many of our components are prototypes. Our components section lists several potential alternatives, should you wish to use them instead.
The Toolkit does not contain all of the basic research technologies currently being developed and utilized at the ICT, such as the reasoning SASO agents. However, we continually evaluate our basic research findings for potential inclusion in future releases.
Currently, we are not at liberty to publicly distribute any project-specific data. However, we encourage all interested parties to contact us directly.
...
- Users: People who use the provided technology as is to either run a component or create new content. Users with basic computer and minor scripting skills will be able to configure and run systems.
- Developers: Software engineers or programmers who are able to build and modify code. Developers may create new capabilities for the system, either by modifying or extending existing code or by creating new modules that interface with the rest of the system.
All Toolkit software may be used without cost for academic research and US Government purposes provided all associated licenses are honored. Please cite us appropriately, as per clause 3 of the license, when using the Toolkit or any of its components for published research. See the Papers section for more details.
...
- The Toolkit and any of its components is to only be used for academic research and US Government purposes.
- Cite us appropriately when using the Toolkit or any of its components for published research. See Papers for details.
- Toolkit users are required to honor all licenses of components and supporting software as defined in Exhibit A of the License Agreement.
...
Please be aware that the Toolkit consists of research software for which documentation and support is limited. However, both the software as well as the accompanying documentation are actively being developed and updated.
...