Hi,

I’m looking for open source/freeware or low cost (under £40) software that will allow me to embed a talking avatar or head onto a web site.  Graphical interface and ideally no programming.

I like the virtual girls ($36) mentioned on this site but am after something that can take male/female, add hats/clothes, add hair/beard/etc. make fat, slim, etc.  I am not looking for a personality, just something that I can embed and will talk to uploaded sound files or even better talk when someone speaks into a microphone.

I used some software around 8 years ago which really was perfect but memory fails me and I cannot think of the name.

Any help, really appreciated.

http://www.sitepal.com has what you describe. £40 may be pushing it though.

Bot Libre has free talking avatars and chat bots,

https://www.botlibre.com/

James Sutherland - Dec 1, 2015:

Bot Libre has free talking avatars and chat bots,

https://www.botlibre.com/

Hi James

What technology do you use to power your avatars?  Are they also open source or is it only the SDK to interact with the engine?

Our avatars are powered using our free open source JavaScript SDK.

https://www.botlibre.com/sdk.jsp

The SDK uses our free open web API to access our server.  Our server is written in Java, and we use the MaryTTS speech engine, but the avatars also support native HTML5 voices, such as Chrome’s voices.

The SDK also includes a free TTS speech API.

Our AI engine for our chat bots is also open source,
http://www.botlibre.org/

Bot Libre has an open avatar directory, so you can build your own avatar, license it as you wish, and share it or keep it private.  We currently have over 170 public avatars.  Most of the animated avatars that we have built are licensed as free use through our SDK or website.  We mainly use Daz3D to render our avatars, but also have some image and green screen video avatars.

It is quite easy to make your own avatar.  The avatars integrate with our chat bots, from the chat bot’s Admin Console you can change the avatars emotion, action, or pose from a response using tags.