Creating Avatars http://creatingthefuturetoday.com/pages/97 Creating Avatars
IMAGINATION: Creating the Future of Education and Work
An avatar can be as simple as the profile picture you post on Twitter to show the world your face, or it can be created in three dimensions in a virtual environment, fully customized from the skin and size to hair, eyes and clothes. In some virtual environments, participants have full control over the appearance of their avatars, right down to body shape, color and size, the shape and placement of facial features, hair style, clothing, posture, gestures and even whether or not they want to appear in the guise of a person, animal or inanimate object.
| The Culture of Games | Inside the “Virtual Cave” | Immersive Training Spaces | Worlds Disappearing | Hybrid Education | A Modern Classroom | Learning from Robots | Collapsing Time and Distance | Creating Avatars | A New Way to See | Social Media | Media Trend | Flip Thinking | The Cloud | Learning Experiments | Finding Epic Meaning | Focus on STEM | Charter Schools | Quest to Learn | Creativity & Agility | Empathy & Vision | The Future of Work | Beating the Talent Mismatch | Workflow | Creating Jobs | Here I Stand | The Economic Machine | Grants |
My Avatar Editor http://www.myavatareditor.com/ My Avatar Editor
My Avatar Editor is a free, online tool for creating and editing avatars. Avatars are digital representations of real people. When you create an avatar in My Avatar Editor, you can then save it for later use or share it with others using a unique avatar URL.
A unique characteristic of My Avatar Editor is that the characters is creates is compatible with Mii™ characters people can create on the Nintendo® Wii™. A Wii is not required to have fun with this tool; it only adds to the overall experience.
Portrait Avatar Maker http://avatarmaker.abi-station.com/index_en.shtml Portrait Avatar Maker is a service which provides character icons completely free of charge!
They are available for your blog site or SNS.
Digimi http://www.gizmoz.com/newsite/presite/home.jsp Digimi
Digimi, a platform for generating personalized avatars.
Leveraging the collaboration of existing technologies from DAZ 3D and Gizmoz, Digimi offers a premier solution for complete avatar customization that extends creative possibilities toward developers of games, online worlds and real-time environments.
10 Sites for Avatarizing Yourself http://bit.ly/dkqMMg 10 Sites for Avatarizing Yourself
Avatars United (AU) http://www.avatarsunited.com Avatars United (AU) is a community for your virtual avatars.
Register your avatar, upload your profile picture, write your biography and share some of your exploits in virtual worlds through pictures, videos, blogs and much more.
CrazyTalk http://www.reallusion.com/crazytalk/ CrazyTalk is a revolutionary tool for creating sophisticated, zaney or dramatic talking characters for unique digital content. Simply import an image and CrazyTalk guides you through the process to bring it to life with wizard-like menus for beginners and in-depth power editors for pros.
Simpsoniseme http://simpsonizeme.com/ Simpsoniseme ... part of a joint advertising campaign by Burger King in the US and 21st Century Fox. You upload a face picture and it does a decent job of turning you into a Simpsons style cartoon character!
27 of the Best Avatar Makers http://mashable.com/2007/09/12/avatars/ Avatars Everywhere: 27 of the Best Avatar Makers "Avatar creator Meez is back in the news this week, but there are dozens more avatar creation tools gunning for this market. Today we attempt an overview of that market: please add more suggestions in the comment section."
List from Mashable
5 Very Simple Ways to Create an Avatar http://mashable.com/2008/10/27/simple-create-avatar/ 5 Very Simple Ways to Create an Avatar "Want to create an avatar - or give your users an ability to create one - without having to do any work whatsoever? We’ve found five simple services that will automatically generate unique avatars for you within seconds.
We’ve chosen these because all of them work almost instantaneously, you just have to click on a button."
Review from Mashable
Oddcast’s Talking Avatars http://www.oddcast.com Oddcast’s Talking Avatars
Want to become an avatar? Just upload your photo and create the virtual, speaking avatar you've always wanted!
Kerpoof http://www.kerpoof.com/ Kerpoof
Kerpoof is all about having fun, discovering things, and being creative. Here are just a few ways you can use Kerpoof:
-Make artwork (even if you aren't good at drawing!)
-Make an animated movie (really! it's easy!)
-Earn Koins which you will soon be able to spend in The Kerpoof Store
-Make a printed card, t-shirt, or mug
-Tell a story
-Make a drawing
Vote on the movies, stories, and drawings that other people have made
First make your avatar
mEgo : multimedia avatar widgets http://www.mego.com/ mEgo : multimedia avatar widgets
mEgo is your interactive portable profile
that makes looking good and sharing
photos, videos, wishlists, preferences and
RSS feeds easy.
Create your online self with our backgrounds, animations, photo tools & more. Easily organize and integrate your online content inside your mEgo then share your mEgo everywhere you go online.
DoppelMe - The Free Dynamic Avatar Maker http://www.doppelme.com/ DoppelMe - The Free Dynamic Avatar Maker
With DoppelMe you can create a cool graphical likeness of yourself, your friends, family or any group of people for use as an avatar in forums, instant messenger, blogs and almost anywhere else on the web.
It's free and there are no Flash, ActiveX controls, downloads or toolbars needed - just your browser and a few mouse clicks. That's it!
Weblin http://www.weblin.com/ weblin makes you and others on the Web visible as small avatars. There are others on the same page you are on right now.
Weblin opens a new and exciting world on every web site.
SceneCaster http://www.scenecaster.com SceneCaster
We are building an interactive, collaborative and immersive online community for everyone. With SceneCaster, anyone anywhere can easily create, share and interact with 3D scenes on the Web. All you need is a Web browser and a spark of inspiration to get started, it's that easy.
... the interactivity of a 3D scene can now be embedded in other websites and shared on any device that supports XHTML (that includes the iPhone).
The interactive capabilities of a scene are retained, so clickable items can still remain so even when embed in other websites. The result is scenes that can also be linked to any media type as well.
Pandorabots http://www.pandorabots.com/botmaster/en/home Pandorabots is the place where you can create and unleash virtual personalities. Pandorabots is an experimental software robot hosting service based on the work of Dr. Richard Wallace and the A.L.I.C.E./AIML free software community.
From any browser, you may create, design and publish your own software robots – and make them available to anyone via the Internet.
Fix8 http://fix8.com/ Fix8 is a free and easy to use interactive communication tool that animates expressions and movements in real-time over 3D avatars.
All you need is your PC, a webcam, and a dash of creativity. Use a wide mix of creative tools and accessories to "dress up" and create animated videos for sharing.
You can also share avatar animation with friends in real-time IM webcam chat.
Voki http://www.voki.com/ Voki enables users to express themselves on the web in their own voice using a talking character.
You can customize your Voki to look like you or take on the identity of lots of other types of characters… animals, monsters, anime etc. Your Voki can speak with your own voice which is added via microphone, upload, or phone.
Voki lives on your blog, social network profile and will soon be integrated in various instant messaging platforms. You will also be able to download it to most video supported phones.
Zwinky ... Turn yourself into a 3D image! http://zwinky.smileycentral.com/ Zwinky enables people to create avatars of themselves online.
They then place these avatars throughout their social network pages....
A gravatar, or globally recognized avatar http://site.gravatar.com/ A gravatar, or globally recognized avatar, is quite simply an 80×80 pixel avatar image that follows you from weblog to weblog appearing beside your name when you comment on gravatar enabled sites. Avatars help identify your posts on web forums, so why not on weblogs?
Gizmoz http://www.gizmoz.com/ Founded in 2003, Gizmoz offers consumers a new generation of character-based visual expression for use across their digital lives.
The Gizmoz service makes it easy and fun to create, customize, animate and share lifelike, 3D talking characters that enable consumers to put a unique face and voice to their digital communications.
Gizmoz characters can be fashioned either as a self-portrait starting from a single personal photo, or created using images from the Gizmoz library, all in just a matter of minutes. The result is a customized digital character that consumers can use to deliver personalized, lip-synched messages in video clips and other forms of original content.
SitePal http://www.oddcast.com/sitepal/ SitePal : SitePal is an Internet-based subscription service that allows you to create a wide-array of animated speaking characters, which can be added to your website for a variety of professional and personal applications.
SitePal provides a rich, easy-to-use to interface that makes the process of designing, managing and publishing your characters a breeze!
Absolutely no programming knowledge is required to use SitePal. However, SitePal does interface with various programming languages for those who are technically inclined.
CodeBaby Virtual Agents http://www.codebaby.com CodeBaby is a leader in web-based virtual agent technology, and enables corporations to integrate state-of-the-art, interactive 3D characters with their websites, eLearning materials, and online services.
Pulse http://www.pulse3d.com/pulse/solutions.html Interactive. Conversational. Life-like. These are just a few of the qualities of the Pulse-powered characters that are changing the way Web and wireless applications interact with users.
Combining Pulse Veepers?technology with our extensive experience in character design, we deliver lifelike, effective and engaging virtual characters for eLearning, eCRM, and eMarketing on Web, mobile, and other platforms.
Avatars | Avatar |
EidoServe http://www.eidoserve.com/ EidoServe
A Virtual Assistant, an Avatar and Animated characters.
By combining our A.I. engine, with our voice capabilities, we produce one heck of an award winning virtual personality, for either your web site, or your phone. Our virtual assistant teams sell, do customer support, respond and answer e-mail, educate and advertise.
Virtually Realistic http://www.jennerations.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/ Cyberjenn | Concept Innovation Design is a conceptual design studio specialising in different areas, such as digital media, illustration, CGI and 3D modelling
Focusing on Virtual hosts and presenters 3D Character, Avatar and Environment development.
Cyberjenn has partnered with media leaders and developers part of a global team spearheading a new revolution in Avatar and 3D character development for real world applications.
Dawn Fairy http://www.nvidia.com/object/demo_dawn.html Dawn Fairy is a virtual human, or avatar, created by nVidia to showcase their GeForce graphics card.
In the past, each frame of her scenes would take a computer hours to draw, and the whole thing would be stuck together afterwards to make the movie. If you wanted to draw each frame faster, in real-time, you? have to go for a less detailed, more cartoon-like character, like Lara Croft. The Dawn demo takes the best of both worlds ?very detailed graphics being calculated and drawn at very high speed, as the frames are needed.