Animation of three-dimensional digital characters is still a major hurdle in the production of films and video games. This paper analyzes the technology of autonomous embedded agents as a solution to this challenge. Multi-layering and heterogeneity are chosen as desirable principles for the design of digital characters. The FreeWill+ animation framework has been developed with these principles in mind. Its general structure as well as some of its special features are presented. Automatic action acquisition based on the Q-learning technique has been presented as an extended example of the system capabilities. Read more...