• The Journal of Information Systems
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• v.32 no.4
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• pp.163-188
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• 2023

Purpose The study examines the impact of the level of anthropomorphism (both in appearance and behavior) of virtual humans on user liking. It investigates whether this relationship is mediated by social comparison experiences, with the moderated mediation effect of users' desire for self-improvement. Design/methodology/approach A between-groups experimental design was employed to examine the impact of different levels of appearance(low/mid/high) and behavior(low/high) anthropomorphism on user liking of virtual humans. The experiment was conducted in an online environment, and participants were randomly exposed to one of six stimuli, which were Instagram-like posts. Findings The results indicate that as virtual humans become more anthropomorphic, they have a positive impact on user liking. However, once the level of anthropomorphism in appearance reaches a certain point (mid vs high), there is no significant difference in user liking. Users who perceive virtual humans as highly anthropomorphic tend to engage in more social comparison experiences, which positively affects their liking for these virtual humans. Conversely, individuals with a high desire for self-improvement found that the positive effect of appearance anthropomorphism on liking through social comparison experiences was reduced. The study extends the application of social comparison theory by examining its impact on influencer marketing with virtual beings. It provides valuable insights for the formulation of influencer marketing strategies using virtual humans.

• International journal of advanced smart convergence
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• v.13 no.1
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• pp.23-36
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• 2024

Interest in virtual humans continues to increase due to the development of generative AI, extended reality, computer graphics technology, and the spread of a converged metaverse that goes beyond the boundaries between reality and virtuality. Despite the negative public opinion that virtual humans were just temporary form of entertainment event in the early days of their emergence, the reason they are showing continuous growth is due to the unique characteristics of virtual humans and the expansion of diverse usage from technological advancements. The production of video content using virtual humans is becoming vigorously active, but currently there is limitation and no exact process for the technology to apply virtual humans to video content for it to be produced accordingly to the characteristics or situations of virtual humans. In this study, we investigated the characteristics of virtual human production technology methods & processes, and identifying the impact of each production technology on the production environment through examples of virtual human content applied to domestic and international video contents. In conclusion, by proposing an appropriate production method for each content, we hope to develop and assist production practitioners so they can effectively use virtual humans in video content production.

• The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
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• v.20 no.12
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• pp.230-240
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• 2020

To develop a virtual world-based immersive tutoring system, we would like to develop a simulation in the spatial aspect to maximize the diversity and realism of the situation. This implementation requires the modeling of virtual space as well as the knowledge and intelligent thinking functions of virtual humans. First, information structures are needed to simulate the hierarchical and multifaceted composition of space and the corresponding knowledge of virtual humans. Specifically, four structures for 2.5D spatial distribution expression, complex spatial relationship expression, object expression, and temporal and spatial representation of events are developed respectively. It then uses these expressed knowledge to develop the spatial thinking function of virtual humans needed to make spatial movement. In general, events have a chain effect on adjacent or connected objects through force, resulting in a variety of situations and reflected in the planning of the next action by the virtual humans involved. For this purpose, the development of events according to historical trends is recorded on the representation structure of time and space. It embodies typical events to demonstrate the feasibility of independent behavior in complex spaces among virtual people.

• Journal of the Korea Society of Computer and Information
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• v.24 no.1
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• pp.67-71
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• 2019

With continued technology innovation in the fields of computer graphics (CG) and virtual reality (VR), digital animated avatars (or virtual humans) are evolving into ones that are more interactive at a suitable location such as museum, airport, and shopping mall. Specially, the form of the avatar (or the virtual human) realistically need to be expressed in a way that matches the users' physical space. In recent many researches, the form of virtual human has been expressed as mixed-reality human (MRH)-the virtual human combines with the physicality as the real part. In this paper, we propose to carry out a study comparing various MRH on co-presence and emotional response in two-typed virtual humans depending on how many actual parts are included: (1) (Level 1) small parts in the virtual human combined virtual components (e.g., the head only) and (2) (Level 2) large parts in the virtual human with the physicality as the real part such as head, arms, and upper body). We report on the implemented results of our virtual humans and experimental results on co-presence and emotional response.

• Journal of the Korea Institute of Information and Communication Engineering
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• v.24 no.9
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• pp.1245-1248
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• 2020

Elderly people living alone need smart care for independent living. Recent advances in artificial intelligence have allowed for easier interaction by a computer-controlled virtual human. This technology can realize services such as medicine intake guide for the elderly living alone. In this paper, we suggest an intelligent virtual human and present our virtual human toolkit for controlling virtual humans for a senior citizen living alone. To make the virtual human motion, we suggest our authoring toolkit to map gestures, emotions, voices of virtual humans. The toolkit configured to create virtual human interactions allows the response of a suitable virtual human with facial expressions, gestures, and voice.

• Journal of the Korea Society for Simulation
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• v.14 no.2
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• pp.93-103
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• 2005

This paper presents characteristics of a virtual human's navigation using a limited perception-based mapping. Previous approaches to virtual human navigation have used an omniscient perception requiring full layout of a virtual environment in advance. However, these approaches have a limitation on being a fundamental solution for a human-likeness of a virtual human, because behaviors of humans are basically based on their limited perception instead of omniscient perception. In this paper, we integrated Hill's mapping algorithm with a virtual human to experiment virtual human's navigation with the limited perception. This approach does not require full layout of the virtual environment, 360-degree's field of view, and vision through walls. In addition to static objects such as buildings, we consider enemy emergence that can affect an virtual human's navigation. The enemy emergence is used as the variable on the experiment of this present research. As the number of enemies varies, the changes in arrival rate and time taken to reach the goal position were observed. The virtual human navigates by two conditions. One is to take the shortest path to the goal position, and the other is to avoid enemies when the virtual human encounters them. The acquired result indicates that the virtual human's navigation corresponds to a human cognitive process, and thus this research can be a framework for human-likeness of virtual humans.

• International Journal of Contents
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• v.11 no.1
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• pp.21-30
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• 2015

A simulated realistic virtual environment is inhabited by autonomous cyber-humans who play the roles of agents in events. A key element, which enables this realism, is the historical context formed by time and space. A knowledge-representation scheme, composed of both spatial and temporal aspects needed by the agent to respond to dynamically changing situations, is essential for the design of a realistic virtual agent. In this work, spatial and temporal aspects of dynamic situations in the virtual environment have been formalized as a key component of our knowledge-representation scheme. This scheme provides a mathematical framework to construct realistic virtual situations that change with time, and background knowledge for agents in the simulated environment to deduce new pieces of information and plan against changing situations.

• Journal of the Korea Computer Graphics Society
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• v.28 no.3
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• pp.23-29
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• 2022

Virtual humans are implemented with dedicated modeling tools like Unity 3D Engine in virtual space (virtual reality, mixed reality, metaverse, etc.). Various human modeling tools have been introduced to implement virtual human-like appearance, voice, expression, and behavior similar to real people, and virtual humans implemented via these tools can communicate with users to some extent. However, most of the virtual humans so far have stayed unimodal using only text or speech. As AI technologies advance, the outdated machine-centered dialogue system is now changing to a human-centered, natural multi-modal system. By using several pre-trained networks, we implemented an emotion-based multi-modal dialogue system, which generates human-like utterances and displays appropriate facial expressions in real-time.

• Journal of the Institute of Convergence Signal Processing
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• v.25 no.2
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• pp.113-118
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• 2024

Recently, advancements in artificial intelligence and computer graphics technology have led to the emergence of various virtual humans across multiple media such as movies, advertisements, broadcasts, games, and social networking services (SNS). In particular, in the advertising marketing sector centered around virtual influencers, virtual humans have already proven to be an important promotional tool for businesses in terms of time and cost efficiency. In Korea, the virtual influencer market is in its nascent stage, and both large corporations and startups are preparing to launch new services related to virtual influencers without clear boundaries. However, due to the lack of public disclosure of the development process, they face the situation of having to incur significant expenses. To address these requirements and challenges faced by businesses, this paper implements a photogrammetry-based facial capture system for creating realistic virtual humans and explores the use of these models and their application cases. The paper also examines an optimal workflow in terms of cost and quality through MetaHuman modeling based on Unreal Engine, which simplifies the complex CG work steps from facial capture to the actual animation process. Additionally, the paper introduces cases where virtual humans have been utilized in SNS marketing, such as on Instagram, and demonstrates the performance of the proposed workflow by comparing it with traditional CG work through an Unreal Engine-based workflow.

• Korean Architects
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• s.585
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• pp.154-163
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• 2018