Check out TVnima

Just so you know, I’m writing this blog post at 5:15 AM. I’m not a morning person, so something has kept me up 3 hours past my bedtime. What could possibly do that? It’s been a while since I found something so addictively cool and fun to play with that I gave up that much sleep. But here it is.TVnima. This is the software that was used to do one of the animations I linked to in a Catia V6 post a while back. It’s the one at the bottom of the post.

Well the really cool thing is that now you can make your own animation. Unbelievable. You can use pictures of yourself to create a 3D avatar, kind of like Second Life, but WAY cooler, because for good or ill, it looks something like you, at least the face does. My avatar lost a lot of weight, and looks like, well, you’ll have to watch the youtube video and see who I wound up looking like.

The point of TVnima is to give a presentation some variety. Maybe there’s some other point with exploring and popularizing 3D technology and “experience” as well, who knows. You can use a powerpoint presentation as the basis for the show, or anything really. YouTube has some nice video tutorials to get you started. The avatar “talks” using your recordings. You can make it gesture with its hands, and you can control the camera.

This is really cool stuff. I can see getting totally carried away with this, Camtasia, a digital camera and a microphone.

The bad news is that right now, TVnima is in a “private beta”, but I just asked nicely and they they gave me a key to get in and play. Another thing is that this is actually a Dassault product. You have to install components of 3Dvia to get it to run. There are plenty of things I wish it would do, but for now, the novelty and all the possibilities will keep me busy for a while. It’s like being the producer of a TV show, except that you don’t get paid, there are no make up artists and you get to sit on your @$$ in the comfort of where ever you do this sort of thing.

Anyway, check out my short production here, based on a silly powerpoint “How to become a STAR at SolidWorks World”.

Here’s the video tutorial I used to get started. This is way too easy. TVnima will be a dangerous weapon of insanity in the wrong hands… Why do I keep thinking about Ben Eadie?

Maybe next year we can have virtual SolidWorks World presentations, and we won’t have to travel or pay for hotels.