Reface – Ryan Schultz

Feeding Second Life Selfies into WOMBO and Reface: Now with Duets!

Ever since I discovered it in March, I have been endlessly fascinated with what I can create by plugging Second Life avatar selfies into the two AI facial refacing and animation apps on my iPhone, WOMBO and Reface (here’s my original post, and I wrote three more here, here, and here).

There’s just something about the stylized, perfect way that Second Life avatars look that lends itself perfectly to being manipulated by WOMBO and Reface, which makes the resulting images and videos leap right over the Uncanny Valley for me!

WOMBO only creates lipsync videos, and Reface started off with inserting any face into still images, artworks, and Hollywood movie clips. But recently, Reface also started letting you take any selfie and create lipsync music videos as well:

Marilyn Monroe: “I wanna be loved by you…”

But not to be outdone, WOMBO has just released WOMBO combos: duets where you can select two facial images to animate! Here’s three examples:

Promiscuous, by Nelly Furtado

Anything You Can Do, from the musical Annie Get Your Gun

The following is one of my all-time favourite Monty Python comedy sketches! (My brother and I used to say this to each other all the time…)

“Help! Help! I’m being repressed!” from the movie Monty Python and the Holy Grail

Both WOMBO and Reface are available for Apple iOS and Android devices. They’re great fun, the results are entertaining, and I can recommend them both highly!

Vanity Goes Vintage! (As Does Moesha!)

The Reface app on my iPhone just uploaded a whole whack of vintage photographs to play with, so I had some fun tonight! Here’s what Vanity Fair looks like in Second Life:

And here is what my Vanity looks like as a vintage model! Just click on any thumbnail to see it in full size:

Not be left out of the fun is my Afro-Canadian model, Moesha Heartsong, who looks like this in her native Second Life (and whom has been through the Reface app before here on my blog):

And here is Moesha in a variety of vintage poses! Once again, you can click on any thumbnail to pull up a full-sized version.

Of course, you can then feed the Reface-d image into WOMBO, for even more fun and genre-bending, history-defying hilarity!!!

My Milkshake

Hollaback Girl

Between WOMBO and Reface, I am having so much fun! It’s helping me stay sane and entertained whilst under pandemic lockdown here in Winnipeg.

The Forty Faces of Moesha! (Courtesy of the Reface App)

PLEASE NOTE: My blog is still on indefinite hiatus; I have made a single exception for this blogpost. After this, I am returning to my self-imposed break from blogging.

As my regular readers know, I had an Afro-Canadian alt called Bumbly Rumpler, whom I renamed Moesha Heartsong in one of my more popular step-by-step tutorials.

Well, I went wandering around the Second Life 2021 Skin Fair, and I was so impressed with this skin by Pepe Skin (called Aquarius) that I bought it and the matching Maitreya body applier and achieved the look you see below! I very rarely buy a skin on impulse, but this was an exception! This is the darkest skin tone, called Goddess.

And I had so much fun putting Moesha through the brand new collection of hairstyle photos now available in the Reface mobile app (which I first wrote about here and here).

Behold, the forty faces of Moesha! (Please click on each thumbnail for a larger image.)

Second Life Supermodel Vanity Fair Gets a Second Life on Real-Life Runways via the Reface App!

PLEASE NOTE: My blog is still on indefinite hiatus; I made a single exception for this blogpost. After this, I will be going back on my self-imposed break from blogging.

I jokingly refer to my main Second Life avatar, Vanity Fair, as a “Second Life supermodel”, because she appears so often on this blog, as my go-to model when I am showing you the latest fashionista freebies and bargains across the SL grid.

Well, this afternoon, I discovered a new-to-me mobile app called Reface, which uses AI (artificial intelligence) techniques to allow you to magically insert your avatar’s face into still images, animated GIFs, and movie clips! As you will see, you can do some truly amazing things with this app that you can’t do with the WOMBO app I wrote about on this blog, starting from March 10th, 2021, a blogpost I have since updated several times.

Here’s an example, using as my starting point the following selfie (the ONLY image which is used to generate ALL of the still images, animated GIFs, and videos you see below):

And here is Vanity Fair as the Mona Lisa:

Here’s ten more famous paintings and statues with Vanity Fair’s face superimposed upon the original (please click on each one to see it in full size):

But wait, there’s more!

Here’s Vanity in an animated GIF as Marilyn Monroe (there’s no sound). Isn’t this amazing?!??

Well, the rest of my Sunday just went entirely out the window, as I began slapping Vanity’s face on as many supermodel movies and animated GIFs as I could find using the Reface app! (They have a keyword search feature that easily pulls up dozens of GIFs and movies for just about any occasion.) After 13 years, Vanity Fair gets to escape the confines of Second Life and go stomping down some real-life runways!

Here’s some of my favourite results so far (some are MP4 movies with sound, while others are just animated GIFs with no sound):

But Reface can be used on more than just runway modeling!

Here, Vanity plays all five singers of the Spice Girls!

And below, Vanity Fair is the new star of the wonderful 2001 French movie Amélie:

Reface allows you a decent handful of face swaps before it imposes a 30-minute timer to slow down your use of the free version of the app. I signed up for the Pro version, which costs US$2.49 weekly, or US$24.99 annually (I signed up for the weekly rate just to put it through its paces, but I might upgrade to the annual rate).

So, as you can plainly see, Reface is giving Second Life supermodel Vanity Fair a second life! (See what I just did there?) The app is available for both iOS and Android mobile devices, so why don’t you take it on a free test drive? It’s great fun!

UPDATE March 23rd, 2021: Here I used a selfie from another one of my supermodel avatars in Second Life, Moesha Heartsong…

…and pasted her face onto a succession of Victoria’s Secret fashion model videos!

UPDATE March 30th, 2021: My new crazy stupid thing to do today is to paste Vanity Fair’s face on Marlene Dietrich’s body! I have always been a fan of Dietrich, and I love how well these turned out. Once again, here is my starting picture…