Programs for creating a set of behaviors for lip sync movements and nonverbal communication may include analyzing a character's speaking behavior through the use of acoustic, syntactic, semantic, pragmatic, and rhetorical analyses of the utterance. For example, a non-transitory, tangible, computer-readable storage medium may contain a program of instructions that cause a computer system running the program of instructions to: receive a text specifying words to be spoken by a virtual character; extract metaphoric elements, discourse elements, or both from the text; generate one or more mental state indicators based on the metaphoric elements, the discourse elements, or both; map each of the one or more mental state indicators to a behavior that the virtual character should display with nonverbal movements that convey the mental state indicators; and generate a set of instructions for the nonverbal movements based on the behaviors.
Generating instructions for nonverbal movements of a virtual character