Benjamin Kuo’s Blog

Los Angeles-based Big Stage Entertainment, which is developing technology for creating 3D avatars, debuted its technology at CES at the Intel keynote earlier this week. Luis Villalobos, founder of the Tech Coast Angels, this evening pointed me to the webcast of the keynote for anyone who is interested in seeing the video of their demo. Big Stage’s demo starts around 32 minutes into the keynote, and goes for about 11 minutes. Their technology also powers the “virtual band” behind Smash Mouth singer Steven Hartwell later in the keynote. (Big Stage is a spinout of USC).

btw, Big Stage is getting some good mention in the “rest of the world”:

• Big Stage: Star in Your Own Movie (PCWorld)
• CIA Technology Willl Map Your Face (Rafe Needleman)
• Intel Continues with Big Stage avatar (Dean Takahashi, Mercury News)
• Intel’s Paul Otellini says let’s make the Internet personal (SFGate)

Tired of getting endless credit card offers in your mailbox? Well, start expecting to see them all over your email, as well. A Singapore firm has just rolled out a new credit card, for the popular online virtual world Second Life. The credit card, which is good for the purchase of items in the virtual world, links to a real-life dollars. The credit card allows people to buy things with “Linden Dollars” the virtual currency of Second Life, which people then need to pay off with real (non-virtual) dollars.

There seems to be an ecosystem growing around creating, customizing, and developing animated avatars. Avatars are virtual characters either posted to a web site or used in virtual worlds like Second Life.

I spoke a few weeks ago to Dan Lejerskar of EON Reality about a tool they’ve created which creates a 3D face based on a single photograph; yesterday and today, TechCrunch has run reviews of Gizmoz–an Israeli firm that creates animated avatars based on a photo;  and Fix8, a Sherman Oaks company which uses webcams to create animated characters which track your facial movement and expressions. They’re not the only companies who seem to think the avatar business is interesting; there’s Clone Interactive, a stealthy, venture-backed Los Angeles-based firm developing 3D avatar technology spun out of USC; Oddcast, a New York-based firm with animated talking avatars; not to mention Malibu’s Conversive, and it’s Verbots animated avatars.

Gizmoz and Fix8 are squarely consumer focused; Oddcast and Conversive have taken the corporate route.

We recently posted an interview I did with Dan Lejerskar, Chairman of a firm in Irvine called EON Reality for our socalTECH Q&A interview section. After talking with Dan, I was impressed by the number of 3D technologies they have working in production–some of which I’ve heard numerous startups talking about working on, or trying to get funding from venture capitalists to develop.

They have a number of very interesting technologies: one is EON Human, software which takes any photo and extracts a 3D image and 3D model for use as an avatar. They have some videos posted which show this — here’s Tom Cruise, Nicole Kidman, George Bush, and Marilyn Monroe. With the interest in 3D virtual worlds, I think there will be a lot of interest in technology like this for people to create their own personal avatars–either of themselves or perhaps their favorite celebrity. They also have Touchlight, a user interface spun out of Microsoft (licensed from Microsoft’s IP Ventures licensing program), for navigating 3D images using your bare hands using gestures.

They even have a “holodeck” - a 3D projection system which uses stereoscopic active glasses, and sensors,  to project 3D images  onto the walls of a chamber to allow you to interact with a 3D world–to create objects you can “walk” around.  Basically, your own Star Trek holodeck.