What can I use to let users build their own avatar character?

How would you go about providing users with the ability to build a custom avatar character, something like Yahoo! Avatars?

EDIT - Let me be mor开发者_运维技巧e specific about what Yahoo! Avatars does:

It lets you create an avatar by selecting a face, hair style, eyes, etc.

This is what I'm looking for.

I am interested in:

• Libraries, free or paid
• Outsourcing to an external website, provided this can be well integrated into our website
• Any other suggestions

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There are many web sites that let users build "cartoon character" or 3D rendered characters for avatars, but most sites don't allow users to use those avatars on other web sites. This one does: http://www.moeruavatar.com/index_en.shtml, but it's up to the user to save the generated image and upload it to other web sites. I don't know of any ready-made libraries of code you can install on your server to get such functionality on your own web site.

Suggestions for general avatar image / userid or email association:

1. Gravatar. http://en.gravatar.com/
2. Identicon: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Identicon, http://identicon.codeplex.com/
3. Wavatar
4. MonsterId

Gravatar is a web service. Identicon is an algorithm you can implement locally on your server if you prefer. The last two are kinda funny but I don't think I'd ever use them.

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There's also My Avatar Editor which makes Wii-style (and Wii-compatible) avatars. It's Flash based and it's on googlecode with a MIT-license.

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Try a Globally Recognized Avatar, or Gravatar.

http://en.gravatar.com/

Allows users to register and site developers to access Gravitars.

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Gravatar.com deviantart.com MonsterId www.dressupgames.com/avatars

Good luck!