The Character Creator tool enables you to create and update characters with human-like capabilities for use in your applications. Use this tool to configure, test, and even share your characters with others online. Your characters will be available for use in any Convai plugin or SDK, and any updates will be reflected immediately in your applications.

Let's take a closer look into the Character Creator tool features.

Playground Dashboard

The dashboard view shows all your characters and the Convai sample characters. When you first log in to Convai and visit the Playground, we recommend that you first explore the sample characters.

Click on one of the sample characters to open the Character Editor section. Try interacting with the character using either text or speech input. Be sure to allow the use of your microphone when prompted by the browser. The Sample Characters all have different backstories that guide their responses. Feel free to try them all and explore how their backstories affects how they respond. We'll go over all the features and how to set up a new character in the next section.

In the next section, we'll show you how to create your first character.

When you create a new character, it loads with a default 3D ReadyPlayerMe avatar. You can easily configure and upload your own customized 3D avatar from ReadyPlayerMe (RPM) with a few simple steps.

Follow these steps to create your custom RPM avatar for your character:

Steps

1. Open convai.com and visit the Dashboard section of the playground. You have to log in to access this page.
2. Click on the character that you wish to edit. This will open the character creator tool.

3. You will notice that the page already has a 3D model that Convai randomly assigns when the character is first created. To add your own model, click on the Configure Avatar option from the left menu. This will open the RPM Avatar Creator section.
4. In the RPM Avatar Creator section, you can either sign in to RPM and access one of your existing characters, or you can create a completely new one. Here we will create one from scratch. As the character I have chosen is a female, I will select the Feminine option.

5. You can now upload a photo to create an avatar from or you can continue without one. I will select the Continue without a photo option.
6. Now select a facial structure to start with. We'll select the first one for our example. Click on Next.
7. Now you can configure your avatar just the way you want. RPM provides a list of configurable options starting with minute facial structure and details, to hair style, to dress, and many more. All of these are available on the right-hand side of the RPM Avatar Creator section. Once you are satisfied with the avatar, click on NEXT at the top right corner.
8. You should now have your own custom RPM avatar. Once the processing completes, you will be able to see the avatar on the right-hand side of the screen.

Now, every time you open your character details page, your newly created avatar will appear.

This section displays a State of Mind graph, which relates to the emotional state of your character. The graph depicts a wheel of emotions and dynamically highlights the particular emotions that your character is experiencing during the conversation. Stay tuned for more about emotions in future updates.

The graph below shows the current emotional state based on the last chat message.

Introduction

We know that language models are helpful for a variety of different tasks. But their capabilities are severely limited by the input length of these models. What this means for our character chatbot is that we now have access to a knowledge bank where you can store large amounts of text-based knowledge for your character.

Overview

Let us look at the knowledge bank interface and then drill down into each element.

We have two main ways to add a knowledge bank:

1. Use the Text Box

2. Upload files (Limited Right now to 1MB)

Let us go through these and see how to use each of these ways.

Text Box

Using File Upload

Right now, we support only uploading text files as a knowledge bank. You can add information for your character as text files. You can upload files simply by clicking on the “Upload” button. You can click on the highlighted button to upload files from your computer.

Once you have uploaded the file, it will require some time before it is available for use (we currently have an upper limit of around 10 minutes for this). Once done, your file will appear under the “Available files on your account”, and the “Connect” button will become green like in the image above. You can then choose to associate the file with the current character.

Once connected, you can ask questions which would be only present in the knowledge bank and get the relevant information from your character.

Using the Knowledge Bank

Using the knowledge bank is pretty simple; once you have uploaded the knowledge bank for your character, you can use the chat UI or the /getResponse API to ask about anything stored in the knowledge bank. You should receive accurate results. Let us look at an example. We have a file called "mb4.txt", which is a made-up story about a Moon Base and its commander, Samantha. We can be sure that it was not part of the training data for our models because this story was made up just for this tutorial. Let us see how the character chatbot responds when asked about our dashing commander Samantha without the correct document connected to this character.

That definitely does not look correct, it is just a generic response without any particulars. Moreover, there is no mention of the moon base at all. Let us use the UI to connect the relevant file.

Once we have connected the file, you will get a pop-up when the connection is complete. Let us ask our character once again about Samantha and see if we get the correct answer.

The correct information is present in the reply this time. It means our operation was successful.

We hope this page gives you enough information about how to use the knowledge bank to start utilising it for your own purposes. Feel free to contact us at support@convai.com if you have any questions.

Knowledge Bank Best Practices

This guide is designed to help effectively utilize the Knowledge Bank to create engaging and informative conversational AI experiences.

What is the Knowledge Bank?

The Convai Knowledge Bank is a powerful tool that allows you to provide your AI character with a wealth of information on various subjects. It uses a technique called RAG (Retrieval-Augmented Generation) to efficiently store and retrieve relevant information during conversations.

RAG works by automatically chunking the uploaded text, PDF, or other files into smaller segments based on the spaces between paragraphs. This enables the AI to quickly locate and access the most relevant information when responding to user queries.

Best Practices for Optimal Efficiency

To ensure that your AI character can effectively understand and utilize the information in the Knowledge Bank, follow these best practices when preparing your files:

1. Single File Format: Upload your information as a single file, such as a text document or PDF.

2. Paragraph Structure: Each paragraph in the file should focus on a single subject and be approximately 5 lines long. This allows the AI to clearly understand the topic and context of the information.

3. Q&A Format: Alternatively, you can structure your information in a question-and-answer format within the same paragraph. This helps the AI understand the topic and how to respond appropriately.

Enhancing the AI Character Experience

To create a more engaging and believable AI character, it's crucial to ensure that the information in the Knowledge Bank aligns with the character's way of thinking and speaking. Consider the following tips:

• Use language and terminology that fits the character's background, personality, and domain expertise.

• Incorporate the character's unique perspective, opinions, and experiences when crafting the knowledge bank content.

• Maintain consistency in tone, style, and information throughout the knowledge bank to reinforce the character's identity.

By following these best practices and tips, you'll be able to create a rich and immersive conversational AI experience that brings your character to life.

Happy creating with the ConvAI Knowledge Bank!

This section enables you to adjust the personality and style of your character. Personality and style settings affect how your character responds and the type of language it uses when speaking. Under the speaking style tab, you can choose from a number of preset styles including things like a cowboy, a pirate, or a jazz musician. You can add to these styles or create your own by adding examples and catchphrases in the field provided.

The personality trait tab in this section allows you to adjust five main personality traits to help you further shape how your character responds. Each trait, including openness, meticulousness, extroversion, agreeableness, and sensitivity can be adjusted from zero to four, with zero being the lowest setting and four the highest. You can try changing the settings to see how they affect the output from your character. There is also a drop-down list of some predefined personalities for you to explore.

Set Language

This section enables you to choose languages and voice settings for your character.

Multilingual Support : Addressing global language diversity, this multilingual feature enables widespread adoption of human-like AI systems for games and digital human applications. Currently supporting 21 languages, Convai is committed to ensuring more inclusive and accessible AI interactions across different cultures and regions.

You can use the language field to set up-to four different languages that your character can speak. These choices define the languages that the character can speak and does not affect the input language from the user. Currently convey supports the following languages: Arabic, Chinese (Cantonese), Chinese (Mandarin), Dutch, Dutch (Belgium), English, Finnish, French, German, Hindi, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Polish, Portuguese (Brazil), Portuguese (Portugal), Russian, Spanish, Spanish (Mexico), Spanish (US), Swedish, Turkish, and Vietnamese. New languages are added on an ongoing basis.

Custom Pronunciations

Custom Pronunciations enhances the pronunciation capabilities of the character. It allows you to specify how certain words should be pronounced. This can be useful for words the character may struggle with or pronounce incorrectly.

To use this feature, add the word you want to specify in the "Word" column. Then, in the "Pronunciation" column, spell out how the word should sound using plain English letters and syllables.

For example, let's try the name "convai":

• Spelled As: convai

• Pronounced As: convey

New Word Recognition

The New Word Recognition feature enhances the character's speech recognition capabilities, allowing it to better understand unique or challenging words.

To use this feature, simply enter the word you want the system to learn in the "Spelled As" column. Then, in the corresponding "Pronounced As" column, spell out the word's pronunciation using easy-to-read syllables and sounds.

For example, let's try the name "Ankur":

• Spelled As: Ankur

• Pronounced As: Ahnkur

Introduction

In this section, we look into Character Versioning, i.e., maintaining different states of the character. This enables the user to preserve a previous stable state before trying out more changes. You can now experiment without the fear of losing an older state of the character, and in case you want discard the current changes and return to a previous version, you now have the ability to restore the version and continue working from there. We conveniently call these saved states as Snapshots of the character.

We will go over the features and how to use them in this section.

Overview

The character versioning option is available at the top right-hand side in the character editor section beside the Update button

Once you click on it, you get to see the list of all your previous saved revisions ordered by date.

We will go over the steps of creating and maintaining snapshots from scratch in the next section

Create a Version

Let us start with a character that we already have saved. The data that we see when we open the details related to a character denotes the Current Snapshot of the character. When you interact with the character, you are essentially referring to all the date in this Current Snapshot of the character.

1. To create a new version, first open the Character Versioning section and click on the + Add Snapshot sign at the top.
2. A pop-up appears asking you to give your snapshot a name and some description. Please note that a Snapshot Name is a required field to create a new version. Once you have filled the details, click on the Submit button.
3. Now, you can see the new version in the list of snapshots. Now what does this version actually represent? This snapshot stores all the data related to the character at that point of time. Everything about the character ranging from character description, embodiment to knowledge bank files, narrative-design structure and other details.

Restoring a Version

Assuming you have gone ahead and worked on the character further, but you are unhappy with the results and want to go back and start from the previous version. This is where you have the ability to restore an old snapshot to the current state and work with them again. Here are the steps to follow:

1. To restore a version, open the Character Versioning section and select the snapshot you want to restore back. You will see the Restore Version button below come to life.
2. Once you click on the Restore Version button, a pop-up appears asking you if you want to save the current changes as a new snapshot or discard them. You have the option to store your current changes as some test version and refer back later on.
3. For now, we are happy to discard the changes, so we will click on Restore button. This brings the data from the selected version to the Current Snapshot of the character.

4. To save the changes, you can always Cancel and go back to creating a new snapshot with your progress and the restoring it.

Delete a Snapshot

You can also go ahead and delete a snapshot that you no longer require. To that you can click on the 3-dots by the corresponding snapshot in the list of Character Version and select Delete Version

Some important points to remember

At any given point you can interact with the Current Snapshot of the character. If you have any publicly available app that utilises the character, your users will only be able to interact with this current version.

Introduction

Narrative Design enables game developers to outline high-level objectives for NPCs, thereby guiding the narrative flow without constraining it to traditionally rigid dialogue trees. This approach allows for similar behaviour as a state machine but with support for scripted as well as dynamic responses as the NPC progresses through the decision making process from interactions with the player or via triggers from the game state. You can read more about the considerations behind Narrative Design here.

Videos

Here is a helpful series of videos outlining how to create a Narrative Design Graph in the Convai Playground, as well as the demo use case we created with a Tour Guide that shows the steps involved in creating your own Narrative Design solution and implementation.

Narrative Graph

You can find this tool under the "Narrative Design" tab on the Convai Playground. There are three fundamental elements to the graph, Sections, Triggers and Decisions.

Sections

Sections consist of two components Objectives and Decisions; and each Section also has a unique ID for ease of reference and tracking.

Objectives

This defines the overarching goal that the character aims to fulfill. For example, the initial objective for a museum tour guide NPC, is to extend a warm welcome and inquire whether the player is interested in taking a guided tour.

Decisions

As the conversation unfolds, it becomes essential to adapt to the player's preferences and responses, adjusting the NPC's objectives accordingly. Decisions are critical in this context. Taking the tour guide example further, when the NPC poses the question about taking a tour, the player's affirmative or negative response will lead the NPC to pursue a different objective, tailored to the player's choice. Decisions lead to new sections and allow for the storyline or experience to progress.

Syntax Instructions

These special character can be utilized in the nodes to trigger specific outcomes.

Triggers

There are three types of triggers currently: Spatial, Time-Based, and Event-Based. These are essential mechanisms that enable NPCs to discern when certain conditions have been met or events have occurred before proceeding to the next Section. Each trigger has a unique ID for referencing and tracking.

Spatial

Spatial triggers are activated when characters or players are in the correct location in the experience. For example, standing in front of an information booth could be the Spatial trigger for the NPC to ask the player if they require assistance.

Time-Based

These triggers would occur after a set amount of time has elapsed. For example, if the player has not said anything or responded after a certain number of seconds, the character could repeat the question or inquire what was the delay. Adding more dimensions and natural engagement to the experience.

Event-Based

Event-based triggers correspond to events that occur in the experience or game engine that you would want the characters to respond to. For example, if there was an explosion event in the game, you could have that trigger responses and new Sections from the characters within the range of the explosion event.

Memory section allows you to view your previous conversations with the character, organized by date and time. Each chat session is assigned a unique ID for easy reference. You can download, copy, or delete individual chat logs from the character's memory as needed.

Enabling Long-Term Memory

For an even more immersive experience, you can enable the Long-Term Memory feature in the Memory Settings. This allows the character to remember details about you, the player, fostering deeper, personalized relationships over time. With Long-Term Memory enabled, characters can recall your preferences and choices, adapting their responses to your individual playstyle for a truly unique experience.

Introduction

Welcome to the dynamic realm of character actions! Just imagine: your meticulously crafted characters are no longer standing still, but rather dancing, waving, or even performing complex maneuvers at your command. Isn't it exhilarating to think about the endless possibilities? Whether you want to add a simple gesture or craft an intricate sequence of movements, this page will serve as your gateway. Dive in to learn how to enable your characters into action.

Overview

Let's examine the Actions interface, and then explore how to assign actions to your characters.

Character without Actions

Let us prompt the character, and observe their response before enabling any specific actions.

Adding Actions

• Add your preferred action
• Click the 'Update' button to refresh your character, then prompt it to execute the chosen action.

Complex Action Sequences

• Add Further Actions to Your Character and click 'Update'

• Prompt your complex action

Here, we outline the steps to create your own AI character on Convai.com in a simple way. We will cover advanced configuration options in separate sections later.

Steps

1. Sign in to Convai and click on the Create Character button from your Dashboard.

2. The landing page provides intuitive fields for creating a character. Don't worry about configuring an avatar yet - we'll cover that later.

1. Enter a name for your character, select a voice from the provided options, and write a backstory. ready.

1. Click Create Character when you are satisfied with your character details.

2. You will receive a unique ID for your new character. This will allow you to access the character outside of Convai.com. A default avatar will be loaded that you can customize later.

1. That's it! You now have a basic character to work with. You can start talking to your character in the chat window on the right side of the page.

In the next few pages we'll go through more advanced options for enhancing your character.