Tag: Pictures

UPDATED! Stupid Second Life Tricks: How to Make Your Avatar Come Alive from a Single Profile Picture!

Jo Yardley, the irrepressible Second Life 1920s Berlin landlady, really got my attention on Twitter when she posted the following video of her Second Life avatar, looking around and smiling at times, in a very realistic way that no facial animation override could yet match (check it out for yourself):

When I asked Jo how she accomplished this miracle, she referred me to the MyHeritage Deep Nostalgia website, which allows you to input a still photo, and generate a video from it, where the head, face, eyes, and mouth move!

Now, there is a catch: you do need to sign up for a 14-day free trial period on your credit card in order to use this tool. But once you have done that, you can submit as many pictures and photos as you like, play around with it a bit, and get comfortable with the video output (which can be saved to your hard drive as a MP4-format video file).

Here’ a sample starting picture, a profile of my main male avatar, Heath Homewood:

And here’s the resulting video:

Another starting picture:

And the resulting video:

Starting picture:

Resulting video:

Starting picture:

Resulting video:

So, as you can see, you can have a lot of fun with this! Please note that portraits which are facing straight-on into the camera tend to work the best; several I tested where the avatar was looking to one side or the other, or who had their head at a slight tilt, did not turn out as well, and a few turned out be Uncanny Valley material! So, your mileage may vary. But, if you’ve ever wondered how your avatar would look if she or he were alive, this is a cool way to find out.

It would appear that you can submit as many pictures of avatars as you wish (and download as many short videos as you wish) during your free trial period. Once you are done, simply cancel your free trial before your credit card is charged, and then to be doubly sure, delete your account completely (unless you actually want to use MyHeritage website to embark on the study of your family’s genealogy!).

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is your stupid Second Life trick of the day! You can red more about MyHeritage’s new tool in this report from TheNextWeb.

UPDATE March 2nd: The BBC has weighed in on the new MyHeritage AI tool:

Genealogy site MyHeritage has introduced a tool which uses deepfake technology to animate the faces in photographs of dead relatives. Called DeepNostalgia, the firm acknowledged that some people might find the feature “creepy” while others would consider it “magical”.

It said it did not include speech to avoid the creation of “deepfake people”. It comes as the UK government considers legislation on deepfake technology…

“This feature is intended for nostalgic use, that is, to bring beloved ancestors back to life,” it wrote in its FAQs about the new technology.

But it also acknowledged that “some people love the Deep Nostalgia feature and consider it magical, while others find it creepy and dislike it”.

“The results can be controversial, and it’s hard to stay indifferent to this technology.”

Here’s a promotional video for MyHeritage featuring a reanimated Abraham Lincoln, You can judge for yourself how successful this is (I personally don’t find it very convincing, something about the face looks off, somehow):

I think a service such as this would work better with social VR and virtual world avatars, where there is an expectation that what you see is not meant to be “real”.

Sinespace Pick of the Day: Convergence (Through the Eyes of Chic Aeon)

Please note that I am taking the entire month of July off as a self-imposed vacation from the blog so I can focus on my other work, except for sponsored blogposts, such as this one. See you in August!

Today’s Sinespace Pick of the Day was submitted by photographer Chic Aeon, who tells me:

Taken at Convergence June 16th 2020. Filter used. Definitely one of my favorite spots.

Here is the Sinespace Explore page for Convergence, which was built by user EventAccount1.

Chic wins 500 Gold (Sinespace’s in-game currency) for her picture. You can win some money, too!

Here are The Sinespace Pick of the Day photo contest rules:

  1. Pictures must have been taken by you, of a region within Sinespace. It must be a picture primarily of a region, not an avatar (although you can certainly include avatars in your picture). You may submit a picture of your own region, or of a region created by somebody else.
  2. All pictures must be of high quality, and high resolution, but no larger than 2.1 MB in size (otherwise, they will have to be resized to fit on the official Sinespace blog, and then they will then have to be reduced in quality).
  3. IMPORTANT: You must email 1) the picture to ryanschultz [at] gmail [dot] com, along with 2) your avatar name (for the photo credit), and 3) the name of the region where you took the picture. If you do not include all three items in your email, your entry will not be considered for the contest.
  4. Creative use of the built-in Snapshot tool in the Sinespace client is encouraged! Here are a few examples to give you an idea of what you can do. 

If I select and run your submitted picture (on the RyanSchultz.com blog and/or the official Sinespace blog), you win a prize of 500 Gold to spend as you please on the Sinespace Shop!

So let’s get creative, and showcase some of the beautiful worlds in Sinespace!

This blogpost is sponsored by Sinespace, and was written in my role as an embedded reporter for this virtual world (more details here). 

Submit Your Pictures to the Sinespace Pick of the Day Contest, and You Could Win 500 Gold!

Having launched the Sinespace Pick of the Day series on this blog, I wanted to open it up so that anybody can submit a picture of someplace in Sinespace that delights and inspires them!

If I select and run your submitted picture (on the RyanSchultz.com blog and/or the official Sinespace blog), you win a prize of 500 Gold to spend as you please on the Sinespace Shop!

Here are the rules:

  1. Pictures must have been taken by you, of a region within Sinespace. It must be a picture primarily of a region, not an avatar (although you can certainly include avatars in your picture). You may submit a picture of your own region, or of a region created by somebody else.
  2. All pictures must be of high quality, and high resolution, but no larger than 2.1 MB in size (otherwise, they will have to be resized to fit on the official Sinespace blog, and then they will then have to be reduced in quality).
  3. IMPORTANT: You must email 1) the picture to ryanschultz [at] gmail [dot] com, along with 2) your avatar name (for the photo credit), and 3) the name of the region where you took the picture. If you do not include all three items in your email, your entry will not be considered for the contest.
  4. Creative use of the built-in Snapshot tool in the Sinespace client is encouraged! Here are a few examples to give you an idea of what you can do. To start, just click on the Snapshot button, the leftmost button in the row of blue buttons along the bottom of the Sinespace client:

From there, you can then select from a wide variety of camera angles and filters, avatar poses, colourful overlays to add pop to your photo, and more!

You can also use any gestures, poses and animations from the Sinespace Shop.

Here’s a useful pro tip: if you want to take a picture without the transparent blue sit icons hovering over the chairs, have your avatar sit down somewhere, and they will all disappear! Here’s an example, a shot I took at the Localhost Connection Café and Hangout in Sinespace:

Winners will be contacted via email, and given a special code to redeem their prize of 500 Gold. Have fun and good luck!

This blogpost is sponsored by Sinespace, and was written in my role as an embedded reporter for this virtual world (more details here). 

UPDATED! Pictures from the Gala De La Lune Event in Sansar

Almost fifty avatars showed up in their finest formalwear for this Friday evening event! The following pictures of the Gala De La Lune event were taken by me, Torley Linden, and Andrew William:

UPDATE May 20th: Olympus Mons posted the following hour-long video to YouTube of the gala. Enjoy!