Emotion quick start

Build a working emotion pipeline on a Convai NPC — attach the Emotion Controller, assign the bundled sample profile, and verify expressions in Play Mode.

We will attach the Emotion Controller to an NPC, assign the bundled sample profile, and see the character's face react to live AI emotion signals in Play Mode. No custom assets are required for the initial setup.

Prerequisites

Before starting, verify:

• A ConvaiCharacter is in the scene and responds to speech in Play Mode

Set up the Emotion Controller

1

Add the Emotion Controller

Select your NPC's root GameObject in the Hierarchy. In the Inspector, click Add Component and search for Emotion Controller, or navigate to Convai → Embodiment → Emotion Controller.

The component appears with a Profile field that is currently empty.

ConvaiEmotionController added to the NPC root — the Profile field is empty until an EmotionProfile asset is assigned in step 3. No blendshape mapping is active yet.

2

Locate the bundled sample profile

In the Project window, navigate to:

Packages / Convai SDK for Unity / SamplesShared / Resources / Embodiment / Modules / Emotion

You will find two assets:

Asset	Purpose
ConvaiSamplesShared_EmotionProfile	Pre-configured expression slots for Reallusion characters, with smoothing, micro-burst, and neutral alternation already tuned.
ConvaiSamplesShared_EmotionTaxonomy	The default emotion vocabulary, already referenced by the profile above.

3

Assign the profile

Drag ConvaiSamplesShared_EmotionProfile from the Project window into the Profile field on the ConvaiEmotionController component.

ConvaiSamplesShared_EmotionProfile assigned — the controller is now configured with pre-tuned expression slots for Reallusion characters and will begin driving blendshapes as soon as Play Mode starts.

The bundled asset is read-only — it lives inside the package. To adjust any settings, duplicate it first (Ctrl+D on Windows / Cmd+D on macOS), move the copy into your own Assets/ folder, and assign the copy instead.

4

Enter Play Mode and speak

Press Play. Talk to the character using your configured microphone. As the AI responds, watch the ConvaiEmotionController in the Inspector — the Current reading updates live.

Expected result: The NPC's facial expression changes as the conversation develops. The Current → Dominant Label field shows the active emotion and Current → Dominant Score shows its smoothed intensity. If you are using a Reallusion character with the default rig, blendshapes activate on the character's face immediately.

How it works

When you spoke to the character, ConvaiEmotionController received the backend's emotion signal, resolved it through the taxonomy (mapping "happy" to "joy"), smoothed the intensity score over time, and wrote the score to the character's facial blendshapes every frame. For a full explanation of every stage, see How the emotion system works.

The bundled profile is configured for Reallusion characters. For other rigs, duplicate the profile and update the blendshape names in each slot to match your character's shapes. See Emotion profile and Emotion output bindings for how to configure slots for any rig.

Next steps

The quick start runs end-to-end with the bundled profile. These pages cover tuning and extending the setup.

How the emotion system worksEmotion profileEmotion output bindingsEmotion scripting API