README.md

🗣️ Interactive Talking Avatar

Talking Avatar is an interactive, animated avatar that responds in real-time by overlaying SVG viseme images on a static image, synced with audio generated via the Azure Speech TTS service. The responses are powered by OpenAI, making the avatar both responsive and intelligent. By subscribing to the visemes event from Azure Speech, the avatar’s mouth movements are coordinated with speech, creating a natural talking effect.

✨ Features

• Real-time animated avatar: Syncs avatar mouth movements with speech using viseme events.
• Speech generation: Powered by Azure Speech Text-to-Speech (TTS) service.
• AI-driven responses: Utilizes OpenAI for generating interactive and dynamic conversations.

🚀 Getting Started

Prerequisites

Before you begin, ensure you have the following:

• Node.js installed on your system
• Azure Speech API keys
• OpenAI API key

1. Clone the Repository

git clone https://github.com/AmoMTL/interactive-talking-avatar-vue-js-azure-speech-visemes

2. Backend Setup

Navigate to the backend directory:

cd backend

Install the required dependencies:

npm install

3. Set Environment Variables

Create a .env file in the backend directory and add your API keys:

OPENAI_API_KEY=<your-openai-api-key>
AZURE_SPEECH_KEY=<your-azure-speech-api-key>
AZURE_SPEECH_REGION=<your-azure-region>
AZURE_VOICE_NAME=<azure-voice-name>

4. Start the Backend Server

Run the backend server:

node server.js

5. Frontend Setup

Navigate back to the root directory, then to the frontend folder:

cd ..
cd frontend

Install the frontend dependencies:

npm install

6. Run the Frontend Development Server

Start the frontend:

npm run dev

🤝 Contributing

Feel free to submit issues and pull requests if you have any ideas or improvements. Contributions are always welcome!

📜 License

This project is licensed under the MIT License.