Avatar Animator generates real-time 2D vector-based avatar animations using webcams or other video-input sources. It can be used with several video-conferencing apps such as Zoom, Skype, Microsoft Team, Google Meet, and Slack. The project is a fork of Pose Animator, a fast and real-time 2D vector illustrations animator based on Google's PoseNet and FaceMesh model. Avatar Animator wraps Pose Animator in an Electron app and sends the video steam to a virtual camera using node-virtualcam.
Demo of Avatar Animator using Microsoft Teams. Instead of using a real webcam as the input source to Avatar Animator, the input is simulated with OBS Studio and OBS-VirtualCam from a YouTube video, leading to the following processing chain: YouTube (browser) 🠚 OBS Studio (desktop capture) 🠚 OBS-VirtualCam (1) 🠚 Avatar Animator 🠚 OBS-VirtualCam (2) 🠚 Microsoft Teams. Why? Just for fun...
- Windows 10
Note: if you would like Avatar Animator on other platforms, mark your interest with 👍 in the macOS or Linux issue page.
Download and install the following prerequisites:
- OBS Studio
- OBS-VirtualCam for Windows
Note: the installation of OBS Studio is only required to install the OBS-VirtualCam driver -- you do not need to run or configure OBS Studio for Avatar Animator to work.
Download and unzip the latest version of Avatar Animator from the release page. The main program is named avatar-animator.exe.
Launch avatar-animator.exe then select OBS-Camera as your input stream in your video-conferencing app settings. Examples on how to do this for several video-conferencing apps are given in the table below:
| Application | Procedure | Screenshot |
|---|---|---|
| Zoom | Go to Settings -> Video and select OBS-Camera from the Camera drop-down menu. |
 |
| Skype | Go to Settings -> Audio & Video and select OBS-Camera from the Camera drop-down menu. |
TODO |
| Microsoft Teams | Click on your profile picture at the top of Teams, then Settings -> Devices and select OBS-Camera from the Camera drop-down menu. |
 |
| Google Meet | Start a meeting, then click Settings > General and select OBS-Camera from the Camera drop-down menu. |
 |
| Slack | Start a call, then click on the gear icon in the top left corner of the call window and select OBS-Camera from the Camera drop-down menu. |
TODO |
The configuration panel (top right in Avatar Animator; figure below left) allows the choice of camera, avatar, background color, and display of debug information. To add a new background image, drag and drop a PNG or JPEG file into Avatar Animator. To create a new avatar or modify an existing one, see AVATARS.md. To use a new or modified avatar drag and drop the SVG file into Avatar Animator (note that the dropped avatar will not be added to the avatar drop down menu).
In the latest versions of Avatar Animator, a simplified avatar editor (figure below right) is also available. This allows to modify anchor (skeleton) points and colors for existing avatars. Currently, when an anchor point is dragged, the position of any name-matching illustration anchor points are set to the same position.
 |
 |
|---|---|
| Control panel. Accessible from the top right in Avatar Animator. | Editor. Accessible from the main window in Avatar Animator. |
See DEVELOP.md.
Copyright notice is stated at the top of source files. Source code released under Apache-2.0. Binary releases are currently released under GPL-2.0 to conform with the licence requirement of node-virtualcam, also released under GPL-2.0.