AI Rodney: Conversational AR Skate NPC
Lip-synced Inworld AI NPC of Rodney Mullen, holding live dialogue and taking goal-based movement in a scanned AR scene.
Built an AI-driven NPC of skateboarding legend Rodney Mullen for an AR debug build, wiring the Inworld AI SDK into Unity so the character could hold live, lip-synced conversations about skateboarding philosophy and craft. The NPC ran directly on top of a live-scanned indoor mesh reconstruction, sharing the scene with skater avatars and a real-time object-detection overlay identifying furniture and props in the room.
Beyond static dialogue trees, the NPC accepted topic goals from the player (e.g. 'Fingerboard') through a debug 'Send goal' control and an 'Extended Goals' system, responding with newly generated, context-relevant dialogue rather than pre-scripted lines. The prototype combined conversational AI, real-time lip sync, live AR mesh scanning, and object detection in a single running build.
My role
Team
Platforms
- iOS
- AR
- Unity
Stack
- Inworld AI
- Unity
- ARKit
- AR mesh reconstruction
- Object detection
- C#
Lead
What I did
- 01Integrated the Inworld AI SDK into Unity to drive NPC dialogue and lip-sync animation in real time
- 02Built the debug tooling for spawning the Inworld character ('Inworld spawn') and sending conversational/behavioral goals to it ('Send goal', Extended Goals) at runtime
- 03Set up the Rodney Mullen character persona and voice/dialogue behavior within Inworld Studio
- 04Ran the NPC live on a scanned indoor AR mesh reconstruction alongside skater avatars and a real-time object-detection overlay
What stands out
- 01NPC holds live, lip-synced dialogue on skateboarding philosophy and responds to player-sent topic goals (e.g. 'Fingerboard') with new generated dialogue
- 02Runs simultaneously with live AR mesh scanning and a real-time object-detection overlay in the same debug build
- 03Built and tested Feb-April 2025 as part of the Reality Crisis / iXR AR project
- 04The 'Ai Rodney' Inworld NPC commenting live on a freshly scanned VPS mesh spot, confirming the character was wired into the spot-scanning/VPS flow, not just a standalone demo scene.
See it in action
