Awesome Stuff: Computer Vision And Motion Capture Via Your Webcam

from the the-all-seeing-eye dept

Over the last few years, computer vision and motion capture technology has really advanced at an incredible rate. Things that seemed like science fiction not too long ago can be purchased for very little and in your home today. Things like the Kinect and now the Leap Motion controller are getting people to rethink even the way they interact with computers. And this space is really still in its earliest days. So for this week's awesome stuff post (in which we highlight interesting crowdfunding projects we come across) we'll highlight two new projects that deal with computer vision and motion capture -- both of which work with merely a webcam, rather than any fancy hardware.
  • First up is the FaceRig, which uses your everyday webcam to not only capture your facial expressions, but translate them into the faces of characters in an insanely realistic manner. Full disclosure: after seeing this video I plunked down some money. I have no idea what I'd use it for, but it's super cheap and it just looks awesome. It really wasn't that long ago that filmmakers who wanted to do motion capture work to create a computer generated character would have to do an astounding amount of work to match the characters to actors' actual facial expressions. And yet, here's a system that appears to be able to do it on the fly in a manner that looks incredibly good, at least from the demo they show.
    Not only does the product look kind of amazing, they're pricing it to be incredibly affordable. Getting a license via the crowdfunding is just $5. They're shooting for $120,000 which is pretty ambitious, especially for an IndieGogo project, but within just a few days they already shot past $50,000 and with a month and a half to go, it seems likely that they'll fly past their goal and end up with significantly more than that. Combination of amazing product plus cheap prices will do that.
  • Next up, we've got the VMX Project, which is more of a platform for developers to be able to add computer vision to anything. They're offering it as a service, so rather than having to install software, developers can just use their API and add in computer vision features via (what they claim) is a super simple user interface. The concept of making computer vision more widespread and usable by developers, without each developer having to reinvent the wheel, or hire experts in computer vision, seems like a super powerful idea in driving this area forward.
    These guys have a tougher job ahead of them. Even as the product looks cool, it's very much focused on developers, rather than the general consumer market, so there's a significantly smaller audience. These guys are targeting $100,000, which is a pretty big ask, all things considered, and the project hasn't received very much at all yet -- so it seems like a good chance it won't hit that goal.
That's it for this week. Go interact with something.
Hide this

Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.

Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.

While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.

–The Techdirt Team

Filed Under: awesome stuff, computer vision, motion capture


Reader Comments

Subscribe: RSS

View by: Time | Thread


  1. icon
    Chronno S. Trigger (profile), 21 Dec 2013 @ 10:18am

    What does a small Youtuber do when he wants to do a face-cam, but doesn't want to show his face on the Internet?

    This is actually a question I've asked myself. Now I have an answer (and $40 less).

    link to this | view in thread ]

  2. identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 21 Dec 2013 @ 10:34am

    OMG I can see all the cat avatars going up now.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  3. identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 21 Dec 2013 @ 10:45am

    Yeah it's really cool stuff

    ...Up until the point that it's used to spy on you, Until then all my webcams have pieces of black tape over them, thank you very much.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  4. identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 21 Dec 2013 @ 2:42pm

    Re:

    Your loss, you are wasting a chance to send some "fluffy" high quality videos to the NSA :)

    link to this | view in thread ]

  5. identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 21 Dec 2013 @ 8:47pm

    Re: Re:

    i was at bestbuy and i told the nsa hello through the always on xbox one kinect.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  6. identicon
    Porn Technology, 22 Dec 2013 @ 11:40am

    I see where this is going...

    FaceRig says "our long term goal as an indie company is to research and provide an affordable head to toe digital actor driving and visualization engine, with bidirectional feedback."

    V I R T U A L P O R N - think Second Life + Plato's Retreat!!

    Combine this with the Oculus Rift & some teledildonics... it's Porniverse!!

    link to this | view in thread ]

  7. identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 23 Dec 2013 @ 12:45am

    I bet both of those products utilise openCV!

    link to this | view in thread ]

  8. identicon
    yoshida Koki, 27 May 2017 @ 6:24am

    we created webcam facial motion capture software

    Hi we created webcam facial motion capture software named f-clone.
    http://f-clone.com/
    Hope this will helps your creative
    Thanks

    link to this | view in thread ]

  9. icon
    Fryctis (profile), 2 Sep 2020 @ 7:50am

    I think in the future this technology will become very popular. I read here https://www.it-jim.com/expertise/signal-processing-engineering/ more useful informatiuon about it. I will test this technology with great pleasure.

    link to this | view in thread ]


Follow Techdirt
Essential Reading
Techdirt Deals
Report this ad  |  Hide Techdirt ads
Techdirt Insider Discord

The latest chatter on the Techdirt Insider Discord channel...

Loading...
Recent Stories

This site, like most other sites on the web, uses cookies. For more information, see our privacy policy. Got it
Close

Email This

This feature is only available to registered users. Register or sign in to use it.