Study On Synthesized Characters And Its Emotion In Educational Virtual Environment

Virtual synthetic character is a key component of virtual environment, which can increase the reality and immersive feeling of the scene. Emotion is the interactive result of the virtual character and virtual environments. A virtual character has emotions which can greatly enhance the realistic of the scene. In general, a virtual synthetic character can be regarded as an autonomous agent with sense, perception, emotion, behavior and action.The architecture of intelligent virtual synthetic character is discussed in this paper. A virtual character is composed of many modules, including sense module, perception module, plan module, behavior module and the decision-making module of the emotion. These modules are integrated into a system. The sense model receives external stimulus information. After filtered the unimportant information, the mind model sends this information to decision-making model of the emotion. The decision-making model of the emotion decides which sort of emotion should be selected according to defined rules.This paper also presents a way to implement the mind of virtual synthetic character. The mind module is implemented by JESS (Java Expert System Shell). According to the rules in the knowledge base and the information sensed by sensors, the mind will determine whether the new incremental matrix should be produced.The new concept of decision-making model of the emotion is also introduced. This model is based on the OCC emotion model. According to the specialty of the virtual character, the decision-making model of the emotion deduces a personality matrix and emotional personality matrix. Having received the valid information, the mind then turns information into incremental matrix. These three matrixes determine the emotion changes of virtual character.With the cooperation of IST Technical University of Lisbon, the University of Salford(UK) and the University of Hertfordshire(UK), we have finished the tools of E-Teatrix and AgentLib. E-Teatrix is a system which uses virtual character to aid students learning. Using 3D virtual characters and virtual environment is the most advantage of E-Teatrix. Students can compose some virtual characters and scenes according to their experience. AgentLib is a 3D virtual character motion library, the aim of the library is to provide a 3D rendering engine for upper level AI usage. The E-Teatrix is used in affiliated school of Zhejiang University, and gets a success.