Categories
Product Release
Pitch & Produce
News
Learning
Featured Story
Events
Tags
Product
iClone
Character Creator
ActorCore
Cartoon Animator
AccuRIG
Smart Content Manager
Plugins & Pipelines
accuFACE
Motion LIVE
Blender
Headshot
PSD Pipeline
ZBrush
After Effect
Illustrator
Photoshop
Unreal
Unreal Live Link
Vector Pipeline
Auto Rig
SkinGen
Cinema 4D
Omniverse
Maya
Unity
MetaHuman Live Link
3ds Max
Marvelous Designer
Daz
Motion Link
Iray
Application
AEC
Animation
Films & Movies
Games
Previz
Television & Network
Virtual Production
Live Performance
AR/VR/MR/XR
Cartoon
Comics
Commercial Ads
Education
3D Scan
Music Videos
Social Media
Conceptual Art
Vtuber
Theme
Character Animation
Environment & Crowd
Character Creation
Facial Animation
Lip-sync Animation
Motion Capture
Metaverse
Scene Creation
Motion Director
MetaHuman
AI & Deep Learning
Digital Double
Video Compositing
360 Head
Digital Twin
Digital Human
Developer
Content
Plug-ins
Certified Trainer
Columnist
WarLord
GET THE LATEST UPDATE

New York Times bestselling author and Hugo Award winner Neal Stephenson becomes a Metaverse Avatar with Reallusion at Korea’s SBS D Forum

Share

Discover how Reallusion brought the author of Snow Crash to the forum as a 3D character.

(Image credit: SBS / Reallusion)

The Seoul Broadcasting System’s SBS D Forum is one of South Korea’s most important annual forums for discussions on the future of tech. In 2021 it had a special guest speaker: Neal Stephenson, the bestselling author of speculative fiction such as Snow Crash and creator of the terms ‘metaverse,’ and ‘avatar’. Neal would be appearing remotely for his talk and video interview for the D forum from his hotel in San Francisco, but the team at SBS wanted to do something a little bit more special. 

Early in October, producer Jun Park contacted the 2D and 3D character creation and animation software developer Reallusion to discuss creating a special experience for the guest speaker. Park wanted to create a metaverse avatar of Neal to deliver the first segment of his appearance.  The D Forum was to take place barely a month after on November 18. Neal was put in touch with Reallusion and the work began.

The work to create the 3D avatar animation and voice began with Neal providing video of him making his introduction so that his voice and facial gestures could be used as a reference to create a stylized character and animation.  The performance was captured with Xsens Awinda, iPhone for Face with iCloneAccuLips lip-sync animation, and iClone Motion Live. With that material banked, Reallusion took care of the character design, teaming up with Actor Capture for the motion capture and character animation

Neal Stephenson’s novel Snow Crash first introduced the concept of Metaverse and 3D Avatar in 1992. (Image credit: Random House)

The metaverse avatars were made with Character Creator and the character animations were made with iClone. James Martin, Max Thomas, and Joel Mack from Actor Capture took the characters and generated the audio, lip-sync animation, and mo-cap for the final performance. Epic Games generated the environments and surrounded Neal’s 3D avatar and the stage with virtual world landscapes for a unique experience and a fitting tribute to Stephenson’s work and future scapes.

JuJun Park, Chong AE Lee and Neal Stephenson (Image credit: SBS / Reallusion)

“When Neal Stephenson’ took the stage as a digital human it was so incredible, obviously a big moment for the broadcasting industry and SBS D Forum.”

Jun Park | SBS News

John Martin, vice president at Reallusion, said: “Neal’s cooperation on the project brought a real-world literary hero into our work and we are honored and grateful to partner with SBS and with such a visionary like Mr. Stephenson.”

You can see a full recording of Stephenson’s appearance at the SBS D Forum on YouTube.

Related topics

Share

Leave a Reply

Recommended Posts