Thread by @Michael_J_Black

Avatars are central to the success of the #metaverse and #metacommerce. We need different #avatars for different purposes: accurate #3D digital doubles for shopping, realistic looking for #telepresence, stylized for fun, all with faces & hands. @meshcapade makes this easy. (1/8)

For on-line shopping, clothing try-on, and fitness, an avatar should be realistic – your digital twin. You need a true digital double to see how clothing will look in motion. But, creating avatars that are accurate enough for shopping is hard. (2/8)

Since it’s hard to 3D scan everyone, digital doubles must be created from a few images or a video. Existing methods require users to wear tight clothes and have cumbersome capture protocols. @Meshcapade uses a single image of a person in any pose, making creation easy. (3/8)

Avatars need to move, talk, and show emotion. We're very sensitive to motions and emotions that are not lifelike – the uncanny valley. A personalized avatar should move like its ‘owner’. On approach is to extract realistic animations from 3D motion capture data (#mocap). (4/8)

Mocap requires expensive equipment in a lab setting. To democratize avatar animation, @Meshcapade uses computer vision to accurately track a user’s #3D body and face in video, capturing all the emotional nuance. This is then applied to any #avatar. (5/8)

What if you want your avatar to be a fantasy character? You still want your motions and expressions. This requires an underlying avatar representation that can support #retargeting between accurate digital doubles and cartoon characters. (6/8)

The #SMPL body model does exactly this. SMPL represents the details of real people and their motions yet can be used to animate cartoon characters. SMPL is designed to be portable and works with any game engine or graphics software. (7/8)

This lets you have a whole collection of #avatars – from realistic to fantasy – that you can take anywhere and that always move like you do. This is all supported by @Meshcapade’s Avatar-as-a-Service platform. (8/8) Videos/images: @meshcapade
More info: meshcapade.com/home