Tomorrow morning, at sunrise in the virtual world of Second Life, a giant head will materialize over Avatar Island. It could be the head of a celebrity, politician, virtual world resident or a recent customer of Cyberextruder, a 3D facial modeling firm with a long history in designing photo realistic likenesses of gamers. The picture you see to the right is the head of one of the developers of Avatar Island rezzing into existence, at sunset, it will explode. Cyberextruder hope it will become a landmark and talking point for Second Life residents, and help drive sales of their new avatar service.
If you're wondering, from left to right: Me, 57 Miles, (almost) photo real 57 Miles
Started in 2000 by Jack Ives and Tim Parr, Cyberextruder, who have previously worked on games such as The Sims, Unreal Tournament and Max Payne, have high hopes for the new island. They tell me that Linden Lab, makers of Second Life, are watching closely and that if all goes well, they hope to work with them to improve the service technically, and better distribute lifelike "skins" for regular residents. It's not that they're expensive now though. With around $15, residents who're prepared to follow some simple instructions, and submit their avatars to "the table", a frightening, but seriously fun cartoon style conveyor belt that models the Avatars face, can be good to go in around 10 minutes.
Tonal Mismatch
The process isn't without it's problems. jack Ives, one of the founders of Cyberextruder told me that the biggest issue they faced with this first generation product was tonal mismatch. Where the face, which is provided as a jpg file via email to the resident, doesnt match the neck skin of the Avatar, causing a visible seam. At launch, they recommend that residents wear a modifiable skin, so that once the face is delivered, they can blend the tone to match. To this end, they've partnered with Cryogen Labs, a Danish skin maker that now has a presense on Avatar Island and will provide modifiable skins to any who need them. I spoke briefly to Michelle Margett of Cryogen. She said she'd seen the original press release for the launch and just contacted jack. Before long, the two had partnered on Avatar Island and she was excited to see how it all went.
One other issue is avoiding user error. As anyone that's ever built an application that relies on user input will tell you, that input is best treated with asbestos gloves, and quarantined until scanned for sanity. With photos, it's very hard to check that the user has uploaded something suitable, and 95% of complaints are solved by helping the user to understand what makes a suitable photo to work from.
What does make a good photo? Well you can forget smiling for a start. A plain, forward facing expression, preferably shadown free in good lighting against a homogeneous background. Sound like a lot of work? It is, but the alternative, if you want a really realistic likeness in Second Life is to higher a professional Avatar maker, and that could cost you thousands of real life dollars.
If you try the service and need help, for now simply email slsupport@cyberextruder.com
Facing the Future
Post launch, as feedback is gathered, and the service matures, Cyberextruder are looking to automatically blend skin tone for you. Also, they'd like to provide an entire skin, not just the face, so that the service becomes much easier for regular folks to use.
The company has had several talks with key figures within Linden Lab's, including CEO Philip Rosedale, and hope that enough uptake and demand will encourage Linden to help them improve their service.
Celebrity Face Off
There is no doubt in Jack Ives' mind that some people will abuse the service by using it to create celebrity faces and sell them on sites like SLExchange.com. This isn't an if, it's a when. How will the firm respond? Simple, they'll make those same faces themselves and distribute them for free, undermining the value of the (maybe) infringing products.
Exclusive to Metaversed: Try it for Free!
Members of the Things To Do group will get a guided tour of the facilities tomorrow, and the chance to bring along a photo and get their avatar for free.
If you're not a member of the group, join today! It's a free, fun way to explore Second Life with fellow adventurers!
sounds so interesting, looking forward for tomorrows Things To Do meeting :)
I'm curious as to why there's still no mention of this on their website. It certainly sounds interesting, and indeed the sim itself is also a cool concept - "a one-stop shop for all your avatar needs".
Personally, however, I'm not sure I want to part with 15bucks for the dubious privilege of looking like me in SL - the RL me is bad enough.
Well, this is interesting (and potentially creepy?), and I do want to try it. I don't have too many mug-shot looking photos of myself :-) , so maybe I'll just bring a photo that I find online that kind of looks like me. When I first entered SL, I had wanted to make my avatar look like me, but eventually gave up and decided to go with a completely different look that complemented my avatar's name. In RL I have an exotic look, half Filipina and half German, so we'll see if the Avatar Island folks have any better luck than I did trying to get an avatar to look like me. I'm a little bit nervous about this...kind of like venturing into Frankenstein's laboratory! ;-)
This sounds like so much fun, I was really looking for a place to do a realistic avatar of me. Now here it is, handed on a silver platter.
Don't have many non-smiling pictures of me. So I guess I will just have to find a person that looks like me.
Cryogen Labs is also great. I have their Angelina Jolie skin.
http://slhaunts.blogspot.com
Thanks to everyone who attend the event today. It was a real pleasure to showcase the hard work we put into building Avatar Island. Thanks 57 for making this an wonderful opening day!
Thanks for the great write-up.
Here's how my extrusion went: http://www.rikomatic.com/blog/2007/06/cyberextruder_b.html