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| It's witchcraft! |
Using nothing but your webcam, it can track and express your facial movements and pair that up with a near Pixar level quality representation of you...whatever that may be. Sound like some kind of high level sorcery to you?
Both myself and +Carrie H.C. were like "I don't care what it is, I want it!" as soon as we saw the video demo of how it works on YouTube. Seriously...this is just really fuckin' cool. Like us, many of you have probably thought "Whoa, would be awesome to bring my fursona/RPG character/random whatever to life and!" and now ya can (or at least will be able to soon-ish). This is like digital cosplay and a promising creative future that's way to good to pass up on.
UPDATE 1:45pm 12/19/13: They've now reached $12,961 on their campaign!
UPDATE 3:45pm 12/19/13: Seems the call has been answered, over $25,000 of $120k so far!
UPDATE: 8:00pm 12/22/13: Now over $75,000! Looks like this one is gonna meet the goal!
I can only imagine some of the insanely imaginative and creative ways this could be used. Way too many to even try to list here, but needless to say, the future is going to be mighty interesting with this out in the wild.
Sound like some kind of high level sorcery to you? When you realize they're completely serious and are wanting to sell this for under $20 USD, yeah...it is some kinda witchcraft for sure and we love the idea!
Check out the video demo below, it's a far better way to describe this than anything I spit out, for just what is possible at this stage of development and some pretty interesting karaoke as well...
Sold yet? No...read on then!
As you can see, that's some pretty impressive stuff right there and they've got plans for things like Neurowear's brain monitoring devices as well as Kinect 1 & 2 and even L.E.A.P. motion's sensors too. Right now they're only focusing on the webcam angle of things as that's the cheapest and most direct way to get the product out. Who doesn't own a webcam, right? They also hope that down the road they'll be able to introduce some kind of haptic feedback as well as full body tracking as well (likely where the Kinect sensors come into play).
UPDATE 12/19/13:
Due to the overwhelming support so far, they've updated their campaign and have included this along with it:
The most frequent question that we get is : "Will I be able to use my models in FaceRig?"UPDATE: 12/22/13:
The answer is yes, yes and a thousand times yes :). We are building this as an open creation playground and we will strive to make it as easy as humanly possible for you to get your models in FaceRig. Because we are working with complex technology, making them respect the FaceRig Avatar Mark 1 spec sheet may be a bit tricky at first, but we will be there helping you understand our system, and we will strive to understand your needs, and we will perfect the method and import/export tools (and authoring tools) until everyone is happy.
A new video is out showing the workspace and live demonstration on a laptop using only a Playstation Eye for the webcam. Definitely interesting and gotta love the humor in this one!
Okay, so now you're probably wondering where you can get it. Well, that's a bit of a problem since it's not out for purchase yet and they're only in the alpha phase of things. However, they are very much on their way and have started an Indiegogo Campaign to help reach their goal of $120,000. At the time of this writing, they have $635 raised since the 17th with 49 days to go. Something tells me they're going to make this one...I know I'll be backing this small group of developers out of Romania for sure!
For more info you can head over to the official Holotech FaceRig website, there's a ton to read through over there!
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