Couple of weeks ago second life media was full of Cyber Extruder. As far as I understood, you send them a pile of photographs of your human face and body, and they make a shape for your body according to them. Then, they glue a skin made of your photos on that mash and… mirror, mirror on the monitor….
Making one's avatar as close as possible to RL body is something that most of us try sooner or later. That noble deed usually ends up in a folder in the inventory for projects that never succeeded. But, it is always a nice try. At least one gets closer to own face in all those hours of examining all the photographs from all the possible angles. And every move out of stereotypical gangsta-guy-with-wide-shoulders or sex-bomb-bimbo-from-the-magazines is a brave step in our environment.
But, isn't all that photorealism tiresome? It is like we are insisting to make virtual world a real one. And, most of the time all those attempts end up looking much worse than we never tried at all. I saw too many avatars with photorealistic skins which never persuaded me that they are real. They never stood as good creations, just like photographs on the mesh. Same goes for the buildings. There can be a building with photo textures but it is not necessarily a building that will make you "believe" in it. On the other end are places and avatars that are completely drawn and that are alive and that communicate their stories much better than any photograph. If you want to feel what I mean just teleport to kawaii ku.
It is the same as in any other visual art. Throughout the history, some artist were capable of portraying with couple of lines better than most photographs can. But, that takes skill and craft. Do you insist on photorealism, or you are a fan of art?
I like looking reasonably like myself.
I don’t want to look cartoonish, or I’d still be playing WoW.
I don’t want zits or scars or waywards hairs to pluck, however.
I want a perfect me.
and sims and buildings?
I still think that photorealism and art can go well together. But that indeed looks like a great place. =)
Since the “good ol days” when I began messing with computers, avatar “rendering” has always been an issue to me. Should it be a MMORPG avatar or something different just like “The Sims”, just to mention one, the making of the avatar as close as possible to RL body is something that I have already tried lots of times. And the results were awfuls samples of bad taste :P
In SL I didn’t even tried it. I just spent lots of times (and money…) to make my own mostly close as I wanted it to be.
Because this time I did not looked for inspiration in any model but let my imagination ran free, maybe that’s why I feel so satisfied now.
@vint: sure they can. I am not trying to separate them on any cost…. just a bit of brainstorming about cartoonish look is so rare in SL.
Buildings and places I don’t care so much if they look photo-real, surreal, drawn or even cartoonish. The world is a bit of art, and I am but an onlooker browsing the gallery.