DAVINCI – AI lifelike behavior avatars

What is DAVINCI?

DAVINCI is an acronym for Direction of Industrial Avatars with Artificial Intelligence in Spanish. It is a group of interconnected software systems that allow developers and designers to configure believable, natural and lifelike behaviors for virtual characters in 3D applications in game engines such as Unity. Avatars can be given instructions and tasks, the same way a film director would give instructions to the actors in a film, and DAVINCI takes care of procedurally making them execute the appropriate animations, say the stablished lines in their scripts, or move to the correct location.

Key features

Humanlike behaviors

Developers give each avatar a task they must perform, and DAVINCI takes care of the rest. Its AI algorithms determine which animations are needed to be executed for avatars to fulfill their tasks, procedurally adapting and modifying them to make them feel more realistic.

Voice and expressions

DAVINCI avatars can procedurally deliver their script lines while expressing emotions through facial animations and automatic lip syncing. Thanks to DAVINCI’s Talk Assistant, users can interact with virtual characters in an adaptative and natural manner.

DAVINCI Director

Developers need not have a high technical knowledge in order to utilize its systems in their fullest potential. DAVINCI’s Director is an interactive board that allows both designers and developers to interact with the underlying powerful software

What DAVINCI does

Design and execute the flow of experiences, both linear and systemic.
Establish NPC behaviors, dialogue trees and scripts.
Generate voices for avatars and their corresponding lip-sync and facial animations.
Allow developers to create experiences in real-time using voice commands

Demonstrators

Playground

Engage with Monica, DAVINCI’s virtual guide. Speak with her, ask her questions, or tell her to perform crazy actions. Test out DAVINCI’s capabilities for dialogue, interactions, reactions, movement and animations.

Play Video

Frontex

Industrial demonstrator.

Adopta el rol de un agente de Control Fronterizo en un aeropuerto europeo. Con la guía y ayuda de un agente de la Agencia Europea de la Guardia de Fronteras y Costas, entrevista a los pasajeros, revisa su equipaje y asegura que no pasen amenazas peligrosas. ¿Serás capaz de resolver la situación de rehenes que se desarrolla al final?

Play Video

Alice

Entertainment demonstrator.

Unravel the mystery behind the relationship between your captor Meredith and her daughter Alice, all while trying to escape the old basement you woke up in. One will not hesitate to punish your mistakes with deadly force, while the other will try to help you get out. However, none of them make any sense. Whose lies will you believe?

The team

DAVINCI has been developed by Estudiofuture Producciones Digitales S.L., with financing and collaboration from several public entities from Spain and the European Union.

JR

Joaquín Ruipérez García

Management

GR

Gonzalo Ruipérez García

Management & Programming

MP

Manuel Pasamontes Romera

Programming

JM

Jesús Moreno Puertas

Programming

DM

David Miranda Gutierrez

Digital Art

IA

Ignacio Abad Donado-Mazarrón

3D Art

ÓS

Óscar Seguro Alonso

Game Design

DC

Diego Cabrera Treceño

Concept Art

MG

Miguel Giner Gómez

Programming

SG

Samuel Gonzalez Linde

Programming

SSJ

Silvia San José Ramírez

Game Design

AP

Alejandro Pino España

Programming

JI

Jorge Izaguirre Marcos

Animation

Divulgation

This site aims to serve as a landing page for anyone trying to learn more about DAVINCI, its systems, and the R&D labor behind it. However, the project has also been brought to different events and presented in different forums and platforms. Check out the reel to learn about some of them.

Frontex Conference on Future Training Technologies

February 28-29, Krakow, Poland

Documentation

Every system that is a part of DAVINCI, as well as all the design choices and the development and production processes that it followed from conception to completion have been thoroughly compiled ad documented as part of a research paper made publicly available by Estudiofuture.

Use the form at the end of the page to inquiry Estudiofuture for the documentation.

Project Timeline

DAVINCI R&D Proposal

Drafting of the research and development proposal for the DAVINCI virtual avatar solution.

May 2022

Project kickoff

Estudiofuture officially begins the DAVINCI project and the first hires for the project are done.

Mar 2023

Mocap room

A mocap recording room is installed in Estudiofuture’s offices, which allows DAVINCI to integrate ad-hoc capture data into its dataset.

Jun 2023

Frontex

Development of the industrial demonstrator “Frontex” begins, which would one month later be used to present DAVINCI’s capabilities in an international event.

Mar 2024

David

Development for the industrial demonstrator David commences. It is a contained VR experience that serves as a storefront of all of DAVINCI’s interactions’ capabilities.

May 2024

Oct 2021

Initial Phase

Initial planning and design of the DAVINCI project development.

Sep 2022

GDC

Visit the GDC 2023 in Cologne to compare and select the best hardware solutions for motion capture.

Apr 2023

Locomotion & MxM R&D

The first phase of research and the first prototypes are laid out to establish which are going to be the next steps in the project.

Jan 2024

Alice

Alice is the entertainment demonstrator for DAVINCI. The story, interactions and functionalities for this game demo begin development.

Apr 2024

Project end

DAVINCI’s development is finished. It continues being divulged through this website, documentation, and scheduled events yet to come.

Gallery

FAQ

What is DAVINCI?

DAVINCI is a software product composed of several components that work together to enable developers and designers to create 3D interactive experiences, and populate them with realistic avatars with natural, lifelike behaviors.

Is DAVINCI an API?

No. While the different components of the product interact with each other thanks to internal interfaces that expose their functionality to other components, the product as a whole has not been designed to be used as an API by other software products outside of DAVINCI itself.

Can the DAVINCI Director be used independently of the rest of DAVINCI?

No. DAVINCI has been designed following a non-monolithic architecture, but its components are not prepared, at least for the time being, to work completely detached from each other. Several of DAVINCI Director’s functions work thanks to the power that DAVINCI’s engine offers, and therefore it does not work independently.

In which Game Engine does DAVINCI work?

DAVINCI has been developed in and for Unity Engine, as it uses and interacts with many of its components such as all of Unity’s animation system.

Can DAVINCI be used in a Game Engine other than Unity?

No. Technically, it is not impossible to port DAVINCI Director to a different engine, and DAVINCI’s subjacent functions can be refactored to be engine-agnostic, those changes require of a development effort Estudiofuture does not plan to invest on for the time being.

Which software components compose DAVINCI?

All of DAVINCI’s internal components are detailed in the research paper that can be downloaded from this very webpage. However, as a summary, the most important components of DAVINCI can be considered to be: Director, MxM engine and Locomotion engine.

Can I use DAVINCI for my own projects?

DAVINCI has not been designed as a publicly-available commercial product, but rather a tool that speeds up some of Estudiofuture’s processes when developing interactive applications. However, all of the research and development processes, discoveries, successes and mistakes are documented and made publicly available in a research paper that Estudiofuture encourages anybody to read and build upon. You can use it as a baseline to your own version of the system adapted for your projects’ pipelines, and even improve upon.

Which Software License does DAVINCI use?

DAVINCI is a proprietary software not publicly available belonging to Estudiofuture Producciones Digitales S.L. and is protected by Copyright laws worldwide. Therefore, it is not using any Public Software License. For licensing inquiries, please contact Estudiofuture.

CONTACT US

Do you want more information about the project? Is there any question you would like to resolve or any suggestion you would like to make? Use the form below to contact us or send an email to davinci@estudiofuture.com