Microsoft Agent Character Editor

With operating systems becoming more and more user friendly, but providing features harder to understand by end users, aid systems started flourishing. From simple text instructions or tutorials, Microsoft introduced it's so-called agents in the form of little animated characters to help you out with various tasks. Creating such characters is possible with the help of Microsoft Agent Character Editor.

If you've ever used Windows versions older than 7, it's highly probable that you've already met some of the agents Microsoft sent to help you. Probably the most popular is Clippy, and with the help of this application you can create or edit such characters.

There are not many tools put at your disposal, the whole process being simple, but rather time-consuming to get all the details right. The whole idea is based on sets of animations and states that need to be linked together.

There is no coding needed, with the application only requiring you to provide images of various formats like BMP or GIF in order to build animations. Depending on the number of frames each animation has, you can create smooth animations and fully customize your character.

Attributing animations to states is incredibly easy. Clicking on each state and selecting an item from the list of available animations is all there is to it. What's more, you can set the character to have multiple gestures for a single state.

Several overlays can be applied over the general animation in order simulate speech, for example. Moreover, branching is possible for smooth state transitions, and you can also insert custom sound files for each frame.

On the other hand, Microsoft has announced that the agent is no longer available and supported starting with Windows 7. However, due to multiple requests, Microsoft Agent can still be downloaded and used on all Windows versions up to and including 7.

All things considered, Microsoft Agent Character Editor is a small, but powerful application that can be used to fully customize existing agents or create new ones from scratch. You easily get acquainted with the design and features, with the only thing worth considering is that the result can only be used on at most Windows 7.