image metrics emily cg facial animation blows my mind

The other day, I showed you guys what I thought was some really impressive computer generated facial animation. Then, the guys over at Image Metrics sent me a video clip of their latest CG creation, Emily, and I was bowled over.

Emily is a truly monumental achievement, recreating every nuance of human facial expression, even though what you’re actually looking at is the face of a digital actor. Created through a partnership with USC’s Institute for Creative Technologies (ICT), the team’s primary objective was to create a completely convincing, animated computer-generated face, and I think they succeeded.

Using ICT’s special scanning system that can capture facial details down to the individual pore, the face of actress Emily O’Brien was transformed into a digital representation of herself, which could then be entirely machine-manipulated. A special spherical lighting rig captured O’Brien in 35 reference facial poses using a pair of high resolution digital cameras. The facial maps were then converted into 3D data using Image Metrics’ proprietary markerless motion capture technology.

Image Metrics then generated a new animation sequence and precisely superimposed it onto the live actress’ head. As you can see from the video below, you’d be really hard-pressed to tell the difference between digital Emily and real-world Emily.

Amazing, no? Be sure to check out some of Image Metrics’ other CGI projects, which include work on Grand Theft Auto IV, Devil May Cry 4, and a most excellent Gnarls Barkley video featuring a anthropomorphic singing heart.

Microsoft’s announcement of DreamSpark

I am very pleased to announce that Microsoft will be making its developer and designer tools available at no charge to college students in 10 countries around the world – in the first phase of the new Microsoft DreamSpark™ program. DreamSpark will be live as of Feb 19 in United States, the United Kingdom, China, Germany, France, Finland, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and Belgium. Additional country rollouts are planned throughout the year with full availability expected within 12 months. While this is initially an offer for university students, we might expand this on a broader basis. Watch this space for more information!.

Students will be able to download any of the following software products via Channel 8 (channel8.msdn.com) and will have to go through a quick online third party-driven authentication process to validate their student status. Once this is done, they will be able to download the software of their choice– one title or all. Here's the current set of downloads...

Microsoft developer tools.

· Visual Studio 2008 Professional Edition

· Visual Studio 2005 Professional Edition

· XNA Game Studio 2.0

· 12-month free membership in the XNA Creators Club

Microsoft designer tools.

Expression Studio, including:

· Expression Web

· Expression Blend

· Expression Design

· Expression Media

Microsoft platform resources.

· Windows Server, Standard Edition

· SQL Server 2005 Developer Edition

For more information you can go HERE!

WriteMaps - Web-based Sitemap Creation Application

Scott Jehl set out to make the website planning process more efficient and fun. Tired of dealing with expensive tools that were either way overpriced or simply didn’t meet his needs, he choose to build a site that did what he wanted and with the plan of letting others developers take advantage of the new tool. Hence, WriteMaps.com was born:

There are many ways to create a sitemap, most of which involve expensive software, tedious box drawing, and other annoyances that get between your ideas and your results. What if this process could be more collaborative and efficient? This is the question that led to the creation of WriteMaps. With WriteMaps, you can set up an account and work together on a centrally located version of your sitemap. Your sitemaps are available at all times from anywhere - so there’s no need to worry about exporting your files and sending them around.

Scott leveraged the jQuery library throughout the site and built a very intuitive interface to layout out a sitemap. Some of the coolest features include:

• Toggling of views between treeview or hierarchical metaphors
• Zooming in and out of a layout
• Dynamic addition of branches to the sitemap
• In-place editing of page names
• On-the-fly creation of XML-based sitemaps
• Print Formatting
• Contextual Undo / Redo

Sitemaps can be stored for future updates and can also be shared with other users. The WriteMaps Blog also provides more information about the progress of the project.

Visit Writemaps HERE

Free 1 Terabyte Online Storage Space From Oosah

Oosah, an online storage services offers Free 1 TB of storage space for public. I think Oosah online storage services perhaps is the biggest online storage offers in the world. Beside online storage services, Oosah also featuring rich Web 2.0 content hosting which intergrate with Facebook, YouTube, Flickr, and Picasa.

However, there is limitation on Oosah online storages services which user can store media file types like movies, music, and pictures only. Furthermore, Oosah user can only upload videos that are 200MB or smaller, images that are 50MB or less, and MP3 files that are 9MB or less on their online storage services.

Meanwhile, Oosah online storage services has a huge disadvantages which Oosah user does not allow to upload executable files, office documents, or other files on their online storage space.

Features that Oosah Free 1 Terabytes Online Storage Services Offers:

• Web-based file management system - create folders & sub folders
• Desktop feel -with folders and file drag & drop, keyboard shortcuts
• Upload content in any digital format - raw, uncompressed image formats & video formats
• Mobile device support lets you upload to Oosah from your phone instead of transferring to your computer first
• Create Playlists, Slideshows or Gallery’s from your media collection.
• Lots of sharing options for your Oosahs - Email, RSS, linking/embedding, SMS, podcasting, downloading-burning to CD/DVD and local high resolution photo printing.
• You can save media as public or private or even share it with a password.

Visit Oosah HERE

Pocket Surfer 2: Free mobile Internet, unbelievably fast

In a hot, luxurious room last night, a gathering of media and business professionals were told the next generation of mobile Internet was here. It's called the Pocket Surfer 2 and it's made by a company called DataWind. Sceptical, we certainly were. DataWho? But we also spent the duration of the presentation with our eyebrows continually raising, mouths continually being drawn closer to the ground.

We used the Pocket Surfer 2 and it really is deeply impressive. Why? Because it offers completely free mobile Internet -- the full Internet -- at speeds faster than any BlackBerry, any Nokia, and even the allegedly omnipotent Apple iPhone, even though it uses GPRS, not 3G.

With a full-colour, 5-inch 640x240-pixel screen, it supports full HTML pages, JavaScript, frames (if you're 1999 enough to still use them), ActiveX control, Flash and Ajax. We saw it download a 2MB Adobe PDF file in less than seven seconds -- seriously, over GPRS. You can even download and open PowerPoint files, for crying out loud. As you can see, there's a full Qwerty keyboard, so Web mail and typing URLs is a cinch.

Before you go off your gadget-loving little nut -- or think it's too good to be true -- the Pocket Surfer has some drawbacks. We were sad to see YouTube videos don't play. This is probably to do with the limited processing power under the hood. You wouldn't be able to hear anything anyway, as there's no speakers or headphone socket -- which means no VoIP, of course.

It was launched at the start of August for £179.99 and that includes 20 hours a month for free, but hardcore users can pay £5.99 a month for completely unlimited usage. DataWind has some hefty bulk data deals with the network operators, and as an MVNO, it covers all the costs of your Internet browsing. There's no contract, no minimum usage period and no restriction on what you can browse. There are contextual ads on the built-in search, but you don't have to use it. Pretty sweet, huh? Click through for more info.

RoundPic - Add Rounded Corners to Your Images

RoundPic , an online rounded making tool for making anti-aliased rounded corners for avatars and images in web 2.0 style. With RoundPic, you can easily add rounded corners to your images via online.

It is very easy to use, simply browse for the image on your computer or enter the URL link of the image and hit the ‘RoundIt!’ button. RoundPic will generate a corner, with your custom colors, size and quality or the image.

The service is almost too easy. You simply upload your picture or enter the URL of the image, and click “Round It!” You can then save your new pic or customize it further by changing the size, background color, and how round the corners are. Once it’s complete, just click download and you’re good to go.

RoundPic is currently working on adding new sizes for rounding, borders, and featuring the option to save as html, png, gif, or bmp (currently you can only save pictures as png).

The site is so plain that it reminds me of old-school Geocities or Angelfire websites, but for those of us who blog or work with images all day and don’t have time to be exploring complicated photo-editing tools, RoundPic is the obvious solution. Finally, Photoshop for Lazies.

Visit RoundPic AQUI

Google's 10th Birthday Present: World-Changing Ideas

Google is marking its 10th anniversary by offering 10 million dollars to back world changing ideas. Google promises to divvy up the cash between the five best ideas that spring from its Project 10 to the 100th, a reference to the numerical sum "googol" from which the Internet powerhouse took its name.

"Our company's very name expresses our goal of achieving great results through smart technology that starts small and scales dramatically over time to have a tremendous long-term impact," Google said in a website posting. "Project 10 to the 100th is a similar attempt to produce those kinds of scalable results by harnessing our users' insights and creativity."

Winning ideas will get Google funding, while the people that submitted them will get "good karma and the satisfaction of knowing that your idea might truly help a lot of people," according to the Northern California firm.

The deadline for submitting ideas to Google is October 20. A panel of Google employees will pick 100 top submissions to be announced on January 27, 2009. Google users will then vote to determine 20 semi-finalists, from which a Google advisory board will select five winners. "At Google, we don't believe we have the answers, but we do believe the answers are out there," a message at an introductory project Web page said.

"Maybe the answer that helps somebody is in your head, in something you've observed, some notion that you've been fiddling with, some small connection you've noticed, some old thing you have seen with new eyes."

Information about the project is posted on Google 10th Birthday Web pages that also feature a company timeline featuring such tidbits as how co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin met and the website originally being named "BackRub."