Just days after competitor Gizmoz announced more funding and AIM integration, Oddcast is previewing a new service called 3D Videostar that will let users import their faces into movie clips to replace those of movie stars.
There’s no word yet on when this service will be available, but Oddcast has provided us with a few sample videos to get a sense of what it’ll be like (they lose points in my book, though, for not even let us embed them - you’ll have to go here).
From looking at these samples alone, the results appear mixed. Some face swaps look quite good while others leave something to be desired. I assume Oddcast will license this technology to movie studios who want to use it as a viral marketing gimmick.
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Seems rather pointless to me
God if i was a vc i would invest all my billions into this great idea.
‘the results look mixed’…no they don’t, the videos look absolutely amazing if they can do that with automatic algorithms and with minimal hand work.
Yo Oddcast people, isn’t it a kind of a “Me Too”? It looks like a “Me Too” strategy that Oddcast wants to show the world that they are working on it.
After JibJab (2D) and Gizmoz (3D) as Arrington wrote about few times and many others!
http://www.techcrunch.com/2007.....ids-do-it/
As to the nice image above and QT videos you oddcast show, I must say, it shows nothing yet just some special effects anyone can do with high-end software - there are few anyone can by and use!
The challenge is always the user experience - how easy will it be for me - the user to do it all by myself online! Hollywood had done it many times by people who work in ILM etc - I want to see how Oddcast enables users to do it. Is it simple? quick? automatic? scalable?
The only company I saw that dose it simple on line in 3D is Gizmoz and JibJab offers a simple 2D version.
This technology is working in the movie biz for a while now. For the general public its nothing more then a facebook app
Nintendo should add this in Mii Channel.
OK big deal - so what? now you too say you do what Gizmoz and JibJab showed last year? dose it work online? for users? simple? Show us.
I never gets it when companies only hint to you they do something and only show an image - just PR
Nice image above, however it shows nothing yet just some special effects anyone can do with high-end software.
The challenge is always the user experience - how easy will it be for any user, like me to do by myself online! Is it simple? quick? automatic? scalable?
Gizmoz showed they can let me do it in 3D online and JibJab offers a simple 2D version which works well.
lol…
nice technology demo but pretty useless for most people. what would you do with it?
That the Va. Tech shooter?
What would you do with it? Are people asking this?
How about GAMING? Every nerd on the interwebs tries to pretend to be a superhero in their game, but with this technology it would actually be them!
Amazing stuff. This has so many marketing applications. The guys at Oddcast don’t cease to surprise.
Holy Smoke! I will never risk my investment in this kind of stuff …
seems pretty cool to me. for the end user, the ultimate in personalization. for brands, a chance to play in the UGM space while keeping some control. win-win
Obviously they’re going for some kind of buyout, since Oddcast has been a streaming audio utility for some time now. They’d sure have trouble getting a trademark otherwise.
Besides that, I doubt there’s anyway they’ve got the science down to do this automatically. I imagine they’re as automatic as Mahalo or the “speech-recognition” company I worked for in the late 90s that used minimum-wagers in Scotland to “verify” the automated output.
Matt 10: Wouldn’t it be easier for a game to merely have a texture map for the in-game faces? You’d load an image of the front of your face and the game would apply it to the character. No AI necessary.
In response to EH -
Seems you’ve got Oddcast the company (who does 3D VideoStar) confused with Oddcast the product (put out by the company Oddsock).
Oddcast the product is an audio streaming utility: http://www.oddsock.org/tools/oddcastv3/
Oddcast the company builds web applications: http://www.oddcast.com
Everyone is saying it may be useless but there are plenty of entertaining applications on the web that are again, for entertainment only. Isn’t that a good portion of the web? You play around with it… maybe take some screen shots, have fun with it!
It’s unclear whether porn or gaming will be the biggest market.
Another big opportunity is putting famous people into new situations. For example, “John Wayne” can now appear in Battlestar Galactica.
I just saw an article about something similar a couple of weeks ago…you can put your face in the Thriller music video. Though that one lets you get the result as a YouTube video so you can embed it:
http://www.realityprime.com/articles/thrilling
SWEEEEEEEET!!! That’s bad-ass right there.
Everything OddCast does is incredibly creepy and horrifying.
Not that the tech behind it isn’t impressive, and I really respect them for it, but holy god do their avatars creep me out.
kool stuff I am going to try it out!
Add porn to the equation and imagine the possibilities…
BR: I was referring to “Oddcast the word.”
how does it work