Talking avatar

Introduction

ZEGOCLOUD's Virtual Avatar now supports the Talking Avatar feature, it supports real-time driving of the virtual avatar's facial movements and corresponding audio playback of text-to-speech by inputting text.

Prerequisites

Before you begin, make sure you complete the following:

• Integrate the ZegoAvatar SDK into your project. For more information, see Integrate the SDK.
• Create a basic virtual avatar by referring to Create a virtual avatar.

• Contact the ZEGOCLOUD team to enable talking avatar permissions.

Implementation

1 Get module source code

After downloading Avatar SDK, find and copy the apiservice folder according to SDK's root directory /helper/apiservice and paste it to your app code to get the source code of talking avatar.

2 (Optional) Add dependencies

In the source code, ZegoTextAPI uses the okhttp3 network library, while you are allowed to import or modify the network implementation as needed based on the actual situation.

To import dependencies without modifying the network library, run the following in your build.gradle:

dependencies {
......
    implementation 'com.squareup.okhttp3:okhttp:4.9.0'
......
}

3 Authentication

Before using the ZegoTextAPI, go to ZEGOCLOUD Admin Console to get your project's AppID and AppSign.

public class ZegoTextLicenseCustomer {

    public static long APP_ID = 0;
    public static String APP_SIGN = "";

}

4 Method calls

After building a basic avatar:

1. Initialize the ZegoTextAPI object and pass it in the Character object (can get from CharacterHelper).

   mZegoTextAPI = new ZegoTextAPI(mCharacterHelper.getCharacter());

2. Set up the callback ITextExpressionCallback.

   mZegoTextAPI.setTextExpressionCallback(new ITextExpressionCallback() {
       /**
        * Callback when the talking avatar function starts.
        */
       @Override
       public void onStart() {
           Log.d(TAG, "text drive start");
       }
   
       /**
        * Callback when an error occurs.
        * @param errorCode  For the Error Codes, refer to [Common Error Codes- Text Driver Error Codes](https://docs.zegocloud.com/article/14596).
        */
       @Override
       public void onError(int errorCode, String msg) {
       }
   
       /**
        * Callback when the talking avatar function ends.
        */
       @Override
       public void onEnd() {
           Log.d(TAG, "text drive end");
       }
   });

After completing the settings, ZegoTextAPI will call back the corresponding method. The callback error codes can be defined in the static class ErrorCode of the TextConstants class. For details, refer to Error codes- Talking avatar.

3. Call the playTextExpression method, type your text, and the avatar will make the corresponding expressions and say what you type.

   // Type the text that needs to be converted into emotions
   mZegoTextAPI.playTextExpression("Text to be played");

4. To stop driving the avatar to talk via text, call the stopTextExpression method.

    //Stop this text drive
    mZegoTextAPI.stopTextExpression();
    ```