Son of Sara — Unity Avatar Player
Virtual humanoid avatar character with JSON API controls for gestures, expressions, and audio playback, built for INRIA (National Institute for Research in Digital Science and Technology).
Overview
Son of Sara is a Unity-based virtual humanoid avatar player developed for INRIA-ArticuLab (National Institute for Research in Digital Science and Technology, Paris). The system exposes a JSON API that lets external applications control the avatar’s gestures, facial expressions, and audio playback in real time — enabling it to serve as an embodied conversational agent for research experiments.
My Role
Sole developer on the Unity client. Designed and implemented the JSON API interface, avatar animation state machine, lip sync system, and expression blending pipeline.
Key Features
- Runtime JSON API for gesture, expression, and audio triggering
- Blend shape-driven facial expression system
- Procedural lip sync from audio input
- Modular animation state machine for extensible behavior
- Built as successor to the SARA virtual agent platform