| Nowadays camera phones with video capabilities are | | | | photo-realistic avatar capable of movement in the eye, |
| mainstream. Taking pictures or videos with a phone | | | | the lips, head and even inside the mouth. |
| handset and upload it to Internet is now easier than | | | | The final stage in the creation of video avatars is |
| ever. Social sites like MySpace and Facebook add a | | | | animating the 3D model with a soundbite from the |
| virility dimension to virtually any personal pictures and | | | | same person of the picture or from a celebrity. |
| videos with a minimum component of originality and | | | | Advanced software lipsyncs the avatar to confer |
| interest. | | | | realistic animation to it. The results are staggering: a |
| In addition to the popularity of multimedia, it is now | | | | static two-dimensional picture turns into a life-like video |
| possible technically to turn a photo into a fully animated | | | | animation with virtually any recorded voice. |
| video avatar. The picture of a portrait contains a lot of | | | | Video avatars are regarded as the ultimate online |
| clues about the 3D shape of the face. New | | | | avatars. Watching the animation of a person you |
| technology reconstructs in three dimensions human | | | | know with his/her voice or with someone's voices has |
| faces from pictures. The reconstruction is sculpted in a | | | | virility qualities in its own right. The effect of the |
| 3D mesh and the texture of the photo is superposed | | | | sophisticated video avatars are always surprising. A |
| to it. Then proprietary animation techniques turn the 3D | | | | few websites accept users' photo uploads to turn |
| model into an articulated object. The result is a | | | | them into short video clips. |