Slashdot Mirror
Animation Tool Puts You in the Game
Matthew Sparkes writes "A new technique could take a simple body scan and allow a user to upload it and use it as an avatar or game character. Previously an animator would have to create a skeleton inside the model and describe movement capabilities manually. In tests, an inexperienced user could produce the animations in less than 15 minutes."
/me makes the obligatory joke about how most Slashdot readers would probably not want a real body scan of them used as their avatar in games.
ttuttle is a rankmaniac
When will this technology be applied to pornography?
A new technique could take a simple body scan and allow a user to upload it and use it as an avatar or game character. Previously an animator would have to create a skeleton inside the model and describe movement capabilities manually.
This sounds like a complete Serkis.
The theory of relativity doesn't work right in Arkansas.
What about scans for the portly gentleman?
Libertarian Leaning Political Discussion Forum.
We've come a long way, haven't we?
I wonder if I use bold in my signature, people will notice my posts.
Or light cycles. Gotta ride the cycles...
There exists no way of exchanging information without making judgments. --Bene Gesserit Axiom
I must have been reading Slashdot too long. My eyes scanned that as Master Control Penguin.
"He's lost in a 'floyd hole"
If I had the figure of a muscle-bound warrior I'd be out partying at clubs and getting girls, not playing WoW. The point of online games is to experience a different reality.
Next step: if you don't actually know how to fight, your character can't either.
In accordance with my latest MRI.
My avatar will bitch and moan and lay down a lot and take pills and flake on people and blame it on his back.
Something tells me that there would be more of a market for technology that makes people in real life look more like their avatar, instead.
Not literally YOU, right..? Or is there a "simple" way of scanning yourself that I don't know about?
Mario Kart Arcade GP already scans just your face and slaps it on a character model, "putting YOU in the GAME!".
Sony ha
In a similar vein, I was thinking that the next iteration of such development would calculate and assign strength, agility, stamina, etc. values for your scanned profile. Either it would encourage a movement towards improving physical fitness, or give birth to a black market for scans of people who are already physically fit.
I've always wondered why we haven't had this type of thing in "photo booth" style kiosks in shopping malls and arcades. It always seemed to me that facial scans (and now 3d models) would be a great addon for both arcade and home based games.
1. Charge people to get their face/body scanned at kiosk
2. Place images on a data card (CC for arcade readers and/or console compatible device)
3. Sell DEV Kits for adding scanned work into your digital programs
4. Sell Consumer Editing Kits for editing images (more Rock, less Erkel)
5. Profit
Your back is never going to get better until you put down that boulder.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
(Anyone else surprised it was so long before a pr0n related comment?)
Only three things are certain; death, taxes, and apocryphal quotations - Ben Franklin.
I seem to remember something similar. They'd do a 3-D scan of you for $35, and give you some sort of file you could use in Quake 3, etc.
"Sometimes a woman is a kind of religion, she can save your soul & set you free from all your sins" - Bad Examples
Personally, think it would be fun to use known cartoon characters instead. I would want to use Hoss Delgado.
The only downside to this technology is that I could only imagine that people would end up using sprites of celebrities everywhere, which could become quite annoying.
Back when Quake was the hot game, I took scans of my wedding photos (I'd gotten married recently) and created textures for myself and my best man.
It was both cool and extremely creepy to see myself running around the quake levels in a tux and a rocket launcher.
Amazing to live in an age where we see science fiction morph into science fact, isn't it? (PS: anyone else remember this movie for something other than Susan Dey's pert, freshly scanned nipples? :-) )
What would happen if we found ourselves with some FPS Deathmatch type games where you're running around killing characters that look exactly like real people?
I can see the headlines now:
Boy murders schoolmate after practicing it in game
More Twoson than Cupertino
well... not entirely, but you can do a scan of your face with the live camera and it creates a VERY close representation of what you really look like (face at least)
This could lead to a distinct shortage of NE hotties running around Ironforge in their thongs.
Life needs more saving throws.
Still a rather creepy idea to me tho.
simpsons did it!
Get a bluescreen, film yourself and enter openmortal http://openmortal.sourceforge.net/ OK it's 2D and singleplayer, but it's still really cool.
I mean, seriously, how detailed do you need your online character to be? Do you really want that extra 10 pounds of fat - being generous - or your geeky eyes or hair you inherited from your mom?
Besides, they already do this in Japan.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
I saw a video where a company took 3d face scans of over 200 people and combined them and averaged them until they could create and adjust just about any face imaginable. They then put this face in front of a 2D photograph of a persons face, and had the computer find the best match for the face in 3D. This was a very impressive representation of the person in the photo. They could then further adjust this 3D representation, to imply weight gain, age adjustment and other factors. If something similar could be achieved with a full body then it would be very impressive indeed. It would allow people to have themselves in a game, where the person in the game can be just as physically versatile as CJ from GTA:SA, and more so. The only thing which has been overlooked is the animation factor. It would be very difficult to produce accurate representation's of the way someone moves, walks etc. Even if a believable representation of this could be achieved by inspecting the build, weight distribution etc, it would not be enough to make it realistic to anyone who knows the person who is being created well.
"sudo rm -rf your-face"
Probably used by weight/fitness centers to scam people, "See! This is what you could look like if you use our amazing $29.95/month plan!" or some such. There is something creepy about having "you" in the game (not to mention the massive upload/download problems of having 8 million "skins" getting shared) but worse would be celebrity abuse. I mean really, who wouldn't dress up kobolds to look like Bill Gates? Scripted dialog? "You no take Vista!" But then where does that leave poor bill? And when you can video someone walking down the street and "back port" their scan into a game? Hmmmm ? Next thing will be DVDs where you can replace the lead characters in a movie with "you" ? Boy the pr0n industry will be into that one in a big way. (no pun intended) All in all a new world is just another day away. --D
This is a really interesting technology if it is developed successfully and is made affordable. I've played a lot of games and if there is one thing all users love, its to customize their characters! Of course, how real is too real? I don't usually pick my characters to replicate me physically hmm.. :)
Battle City
The last thing this world needs is more 40-year-old men dressed up as sailor moon or female elves. I think we've managed to restrict them to anime cons so far...
I find it very funny when people know me as a male tauren warrior in WoW and then meet me on vent and realise I'm a chick. I don't think I'd make as impressive a warrior if my char looked like me. Not to mention confusing if all my alts looked the same.