Virtual characters, also known as virtual actors, have become very popular in the last 15 years, mainly through 3D movies and games. In movies, they now have very realistic physical and emotional characteristics, including their facial expressions, hair, clothes, and motions. In parallel, robotics has made considerable progress and new kinds of robots are available as social companions. Some of them have the appearance of humans or pets. Since they are physically present, we call them artificial characters rather than virtual characters. These social robots share a lot of research in common with virtual characters. In the rest of this essay, we will call them VACs (virtual and artificial characters).
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