VIRTUAL ANIMAL CHARACTER GENERATION FROM IMAGE OR VIDEO DATA

Systems and methods for generating a customized virtual animal character are disclosed. A system may obtain video data or other media depicting a real animal, and then may provide the obtained media to one or more machine learning models configured to learn visual appearance and behavior information regarding the particular animal depicted in the video or other media. The system may then generate a custom visual appearance model and a custom behavior model corresponding to the real animal, which may subsequently be used to render, within a virtual environment of a video game, a virtual animal character that resembles the real animal in appearance and in-game behavior.