Darwin Dimensions went to Alpha with their Evolver avatar
generator software. This is already the second generation of
Evolver, now being served to the audience as a web based
application. Just like in the discovery channel, you just
select parents - and adjust the result with a slider.
Except this is faster than nature. And you do not have to worry
about the dirty details.
The Evolver tool is really advanced under the hood. It exports
the avatar automatically to different skeletons and file formats
used by many different platforms. The supported platforms are
announced during June.
"We've built the new Evolver web application
based on the original Evolver Windows app but we've added a
completely updated workflow, clone from photo technology, new
content including new Evolver 'ancestors', clothing, skin and
makeup, hair styles, the global transporter technology and a number
of performance enhancements", Says Brian Nilles, CEO of Darwin
Dimensions, Inc. " We're really pleased with the result for
this early release, and based on the level of interest we've seen
since we sent Alpha invites out less than two weeks ago, our
customers and the consumers have approved as well."
The avatar is built by morphing different ready made avatars
(called ancestors) together using sliders. It is possible to select
a specific feature to adjust, for example eyes. For the ordinary
user the solution offers both unrestricted freedom and good looking
results. This is an important point to make; using many other
avatar generation tools, it is too easy to create deformed and odd
looking characters. Using Evolver, the modifications are easy to
constrain so that the result is always, if not desirable, at least
acceptable.
I must admit that even my SL Avatar, which tries to look like
me, looks a bit odd because I am not an artist, and also because I
don't fit well into SL basic avatar constraints. Some avatars work
well in SL, like you can see from the picture below.
This is Trinity and the Second Life avatar that looks like
her - get the shape here for
yourself.
In the Evolver tool, user is not confined to the predefined set
of avatars to morph. It offers a possibility to "clone". The
cloning here means simply that you can upload a photo of your face
and define 11 important points and Evolver calculates your head to
an avatar, the clone of you.
This is similar to Facegen technology used by realXtend (see
more here: The Making of
the Sylvester Stallone avatar). To compare Facegen/realXtend
and Evolver cloning, I took liberty to model Ralf "the
shark" in both tools:
Three Ralfs: Evolver-Ralf, realXtend-Ralf, and Ralf in his
natural form (as spotted on Discovery channel).
It is hard to make exact comparisons, as the Evolver model is
not rendered using the same platform. Maxping will get back to this
when it is possible to export avatars (June/2009).
Tim Blagden from Darwin Dimensions sent us a screenshot of
Obama, after he read our article where we compared avatars from
different platforms. It looks rather convincing:
Maxping questions to Brian Nilles, CEO of Darwin
Dimensions
Jani: What is the expected size of the market for
Evolver today and in the future?
Brian: The markets which Darwin addresses are both massive and
growing. Because each Evolver avatar is born with a custom face and
body animation rig, we can transport automatically to nearly any 2D
or 3D experience. So the traditional Virtual Worlds, Games and
other 3D immersive experiences are easily addressed, but also a
growing number of applications which are enhanced by avatars in
mobile, social media, enterprise and promotional applications.
Jani: From the web site I got impression that the user
pays for exporting the avatar. Generally users want to tweak their
characters often, does your pricing take it into account
somehow?
Brian: We encourage people to make changes to their avatars
often and have priced it such that the consumer pays little or
nothing at all. For a great deal of the basic functionality,
Evolver is free to consumers - and depending on the partner - that
goes for transport as well. At launch, there will be paid services
available including Virtual Goods, and there will be fees for some
transport partners, but we expect it to be the exception not the
rule.
Jani: Are you planning to host a virtual world where
users could meet and show off their Evolver-generated
characters?
Brian: For a couple reasons - no plans for an Evolver Virtual
World.
For those worlds or apps which would like to deliver web
accessible Avatar generation to their customers, we deliver Evolver
as a licensable Avatar generator. We've designed it so that
customers re-brand the experience as well as completely customize
Evolver's content to make it most relevant for their world. So you
will see Evolver licensee's worlds as spots where people are
showing off their avatars.
We will also deliver a number of fun things to do which will
enable consumers to show off their avatars, both through Evolver
apps and partner apps, with some of them being quite viral! More on
that in the coming weeks!
We're sticking with what we do well - which is enable consumers
with no 3D experience to create Avatars which are an expression of
themselves, and introducing them to new experiences that they would
otherwise have missed.
Conclusion
The Evolver's ease of use was one of the best I have
experienced. The web based application causes some delay, which is
annoying, but the great results help to overcome that. If the June
announcement of supported platforms is what Maxping.org expects,
and the pricing is kept reasonable for the user, Evolver has all
the possibilities to evolve into the number one avatar generation
tool. One particularly nice feature was the range of initial
avatars available from various ethnic groups - these were all of
very high quality.
Of course if Darwin Dimensions did decide to support the
Second Life® skin template format as an export
option their potential userbase would grow massively overnight
:)