Start with a picture
Passport-style images are best
AvMaker allows anyone to transform their favorite picture into an avatar in just one easy step. If you follow these simple suggestions you'll get great results everytime. Please make sure that your hair (including bangs!) is out of your face. It might sound obvious, but make sure your eyes are open when you take your picture and if you wear glasses, take them off.
Good, even lighting is what you want. Don't try to get good results from web cams, mobile phone cameras or pictures without a flash. Try to take a picture that has you looking straight at the camera and has no shadows on your face. You should compose this picture as if you are taking a passport photo. Be close to the camera and take up most of the field of view. If your subject is too far away from the camera, the system will fail.
Everyone want to look their best and a nice smile is always pleasant -- EXCEPT NOW! It sounds strange, but a very plain expression will give you the best results. No big smiles! Pictures with glasses and hats, funny faces and masks might produce interesting results, but we're not going to promise anything where these are concerned. You may want to try a picture of your dog, cat, horse or goldfish, but do so at your own risk - there's no telling what these will look like!
Automated face finding
Locates the face in under one second!
AvMaker will automatically find the person's face in the image and transform it from a simple 2D image into a 3D head model. CyberExtruder’s approach combines statistical, projective and lighting algorithms based on training databases to produce an automatic 2D to 3D head creator. The algorithms at the core of AvMaker have been trained on a large, widely diverse dataset of 2D images with a wide range of rotations and lighting conditions.
Fast head generation
Makes head models on the fly!
The speed with which AvMaker generates a new head model is truly impressive because of how quickly and accurately it locates all the anatomically relevant parts of the human head in a 2D image. AvMaker also contains algorithms trained on carefully constructed 3D laser scans as well as numerous real world lighting models. The end result is a very fast 2D to 3D generator.
Make avatars for all of your favorite 3D worlds
There are many plug-ins available
CyberExtruder's AvMaker has plug-ins that allow you to make avatars for many of the most popular 3D virtual worlds like Second Life, DarkStar, OpenSim, Qwaq Forums, and Activeworlds. You can also make 3D models for use in 3D modeling applications like 3D StudioMax and Maya. The best part is that new plug-ins are quick and easy to make so we'll never be behind the curve!