I have continued to explore and be impressed by the avatar model creation site evolver.com
Having created an avatar and looked at the various ways of transporting that content to places I also tried the link to the unity3d powered Friends Hangout. I had tried this a little while ago, and it has changed drastically. There are now multiple game rooms and types to experiment with, and yes it does really import your evolver avatar into unity3d and the engine for you. Something that I can see growing as more platforms open up.
For those of your who have basic 3d packages but not the human clip art that you need it is worth trying the Evolver test transport. They have a basic avatar (to do a try before you buy on your own) that lets you create a sample with a certain resolution, number of bones and file format which you can then import. I am still experimenting with the ideal format for me using Cheetah and Unity3d but it looks very promising. The bones work, the mesh is bound, the textures are there. It costs $39 to export your own creation but that seems well worth the price I have to say.
I just have to decide if I want the more freaky avatar I created or not?
This is the Friends Hangout embed. It uses the Unity3d, but now that on Mac Snow Leopard Safari Unity is currently broken, works fine in Firefox though if you want to try it.
Wow. So you’ve had success using evolver? My avatars always look so mean.
Well I am not sure I am successful in the modelling stakes, but the getting something working seems and the tool chain flow seems to be good 🙂
My modeling skills are awful at best.
Actually, unity does work in Safari on Snow Leopard – you just need to enable 32 bits – more detail here: http://blogs.unity3d.com/2009/08/25/snow-leopards-64-bit-safari-and-unity/
We just released a bunch of new functionality at Evolver:
NEW enhancements at http://www.evolver.com:
1) Animated Avatars. Throughout the site you will see your avatars and those created by others displayed with expressive animation. Watch your avatars come alive in front of your very eyes!
2) Animated Avatar GIF’s, JPG’s and Videos for Social Media – Create or choose your avatar from the gallery, then choose from 20 animations like ‘winking’, ‘shouting’, ‘dancing’, ‘sleeping’ then deliver your animated Avatar to Facebook, Myspace, MSN IM, and many social media sites. Wait till your friends see your new avatar doing startling things on the screen! See the ‘Animate your Avatar’ section of the transport page for details.
3) Buy or Sell Avatars in the Gallery, which is now our Avatar Marketplace.
a. Buyers – Choose from over 400 existing designs made by users all over the world, then customize the design or immediately deploy it to one of the many destinations on the transport page. Some are free to use, others cost between $1 and $10 each.
b. Sellers – If you have existing avatars in your gallery or you would like to make your new avatar designs available to Evolver and its partner, you can now set a price. See the “gallery” tab in your dashboard.
4) 72 New Longer Hairstyles/Colors – makes it even easier to find the exact style for your mood today.
5) New workflow – take a look at our brand new workflow that makes it even easier to get started making a great looking Avatar.
6) 3D Pros – You can now enter at http://www.evolver.com/pro to design and purchase all the 3D source data for your avatars.
Have fun!!!
Brian
Wow I’ll have to go make another new avi then. Your site looks pretty promising.
Do you think you will come up with some sort of deal if we want to purchase a set of characters. (like buying 3 avitars at once for the pro use costs 90 dollars instead of around 120?) that’d be pretty cool plus for game design, there are often more than one charaacters needed and at 40 dollars a character, thigns can get a little pricy.
I would get hold of Brian and the guys at evolver and discuss bundles etc.Many of the interesting uses are actually free in that your AV is packaged up and sent somewhere for you. I am guessing there are less of us in the prosumer market who need to buy the fully rigged AV’s?