The other extremely interesting facial technology is from a company called eyematic. You say eye-who??? Well
eyematic recently merged with the VRML super company Shout Interactive so the facial recognition PhD's at eyematic
are now one with the content wizards of shout. Eyematic's facial recognition is the fastest stuff around and can
recognize and assemble a 3D face in real time.
Note that both face2face and eyematic's technology are markerless so the people being recognized and tracked do not,
I repeat, do not, need to have funny little dots or markers painted or pasted to their face. It's so much less
messy.
Face2face seems to be going after the higher end professional animator market. SoftImage, Maya and 3D Studo Max are either in the
process of integrating face2face software with their systems. In addition face2face does not yet produce the animations in real time so one
simply records the facial motion onto tape of digital video and let's the system run. It is not however a lengthy process and is
expected to be in real time "soon".
Face2face produced animation playing back as streamed animation is RealMedia player. (courtesy Face2Face)
Another interesting aspect about face2face is that face2face sells their product as an ASP, Application Service Provider. You don't pay
anything to use and develop and animation until you process the data through their product (AlterEGO). It's an interesting
business model that does make it very low cost to get started. I'd expect to see more ASPs for lots of services evolving more
and more as the Internet becomes the primary method for software delivery.
Eyematic is gearing their products more towards the consumer market with a real time chat type interface. The idea is that you
can do video type chatting to other people but rather then them seeing your real face they see an avatar, say Al Gore, or George Bush!
They are also producing products for the animation development crowd also. An awsome example of the potential power of integrating
eyematic's facial recognition with shout3D delivery is a talking pumpkin head.
There are several other notable face tools/toys, Ulead's Face Factory is a little system for playing with 3D faces.
Wylbur which is I believe a one person effort is also a very cool facial animation effort.
Of course the technology world isn't stopping above the neck, wait until the next article on all the rest of the body ;-)
