[HN Gopher] Show HN: Generate a 3D model that looks like you and...
___________________________________________________________________
Show HN: Generate a 3D model that looks like you and apply AR
animation effects
Author : soorya696
Score : 64 points
Date : 2021-02-23 16:44 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.youtube.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.youtube.com)
| pradeepb30 wrote:
| Product: Highavenue is a mobile app using which anyone can
| generate a 3D Character (within a minute or so) that looks very
| similar to them with just three photos as inputs. They can also
| apply different ready-made animations to the model and record
| some fun, attractive videos with it in Augmented Reality.
|
| Here are some of the links for you to quickly check out the
| product:
|
| Demo Video: https://youtu.be/dCEGx-thXD4
|
| Android:
| https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.highavenue...
|
| iOS: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/highavenue/id1470937706?ls=1
|
| Tech:
|
| Built using Unity Game Engine, Blendshape & other animation
| techniques, Segmentation algorithm etc.
|
| Vision & the problem:
|
| Unlike other AR consumer platforms, our vision is to democratize
| the creation of 3D animated scenes. Anybody should be able to
| create a short 3D animation of length 15 to 30 seconds and even
| be a part of it. Usually, 3D animations need big tools to build,
| weeks to learn, and hours to create. Not just that, it involves
| various stages like modeling, rigging, texturing, and then
| animating it. With the above version of Highavenue released, we
| solved the modeling, rigging & texturing part of the problem by
| automating the creation of 3D characters. And in the upcoming
| versions, with the technologies like body Tracking & depth
| detection, anybody can just hop into a 3D scene, select a
| character that they want to play, and start acting. It's as
| simple as that.
|
| This opens a new realm of opportunities for creators and the way
| we tell our stories.
|
| - Tiktok lowered the video creation barrier from YouTube
|
| - Snapchat lowered the barrier for conversations
|
| - Clubhouse did the same for audio.
|
| We(Highavenue) will lower the barrier to create 3D animated
| scenes. With just your smartphone, you should be able to create
| 15 -30s animated scenes easily.
|
| Our Story:
|
| (Bootstrapped Startup)We are a team of four members -- Pradeep
| Baskaran, Soorya Sankar(Developer), Terrance Abilan (3D Full-
| stack Animator), & Renold J (3D Generalist - Full-time employee)
| hailing from small towns & tier 2/3 cities in Tamilnadu, India
| like Anupuram, Bhavani, Thoothukudi, Kanya Kumari respectively
| (you wouldnt heard about these places before). We are huge fans
| of anime, games, and other 3D-based content. And working on
| Highavenue seemed the best fit for us.
|
| During Covid-19, we rented a small apartment outside of Anupuram
| Township, Tamilnadu, India, and converted the living space to
| Office -- 4 desks, 2 systems, and a rented workstation. We juggle
| our work within the systems, and there were times when we
| couldn't afford a Mac and we would borrow it from other startups
| for an hour to build and Ship iOS versions.
|
| We bootstrapped our way here after providing services to clients
| in the US and India. Covid-19 almost made us out of business
| since almost every client we had and deals we were about to do
| were called off. And a lot happened:
|
| - We saved up from our previous services work.
|
| - We borrowed some to manage operations.
|
| - We paid back all the debts.
|
| - A few Investors we cold emailed said "No" to our AR consumer
| platform idea.
|
| - We got the clients back. We saved up again.
|
| - With the little amount we had in the bank -- we decided that it
| was time. We concentrated purely building Highavenue.
|
| We built this product within 10 weeks and shipped it out a few
| weeks back (later mid of Jan 2021). We are iterating the product
| rapidly, fixing bugs, building minor features, talking to users
| repeatedly. It's the love for animations, cartoons, & consumer
| platforms that drive us.
|
| Any feedback/suggestion would be very much appreciated - It will
| help us improve. Get in touch with us - email:
| pradeep@highavenue.co or admin@highavenue.co
|
| thanks! - Highavenue Team
| martokus wrote:
| Are you currently experiencing any server issues? I'm stuck on
| the generating head screen for over 5min now...
| pradeepb30 wrote:
| Let me check and get back to you soon. But I can see that
| others are generating their model successfully.
|
| Apologies about the delay. There are chances when the capture
| has some issues.
| hutattedonmyarm wrote:
| The first screen your app shows me is a login screen, without
| any explanation whatsoever why it would need a login. That's
| not a good first impression.
|
| Edit: I realized that my comment is probably more dismissal
| than intended. The core functionality of your app
|
| ,,a mobile app using which anyone can generate a 3D Character
| (within a minute or so) that looks very similar to them with
| just three photos as inputs. They can also apply different
| ready-made animations to the model and record some fun,
| attractive videos with it in Augmented Reality."
|
| doesn't inherently need an account to work. So a login/signup
| screen without anything else as a landing screen isn't
| particularly encouraging
| pradeepb30 wrote:
| Thank you so much for the feedback. Yes, I agree. We will get
| that designed and shipped soon. Probably this week itself.
| pradeepb30 wrote:
| Thanks again :) for the edit! Means a world to us getting
| these feedback. Honestly, we wanted to build a network around
| it and as we move forward introduce more stuff. Plus, having
| a login makes it comfortable for us to contact users for more
| feedback. Those initial comments are important for us :)
|
| I might be wrong. May be introducing a guest login without
| having to sign up but just to try out the product/tool makes
| more sense. I'll note this down :)
| asadlionpk wrote:
| Let them create the character, play with it in AR without
| login but keep the login on "export" ;)
| jmkd wrote:
| This is great, and worked well for me. Any chance to change the
| outfits on the model? Mine is so far from what I would normally
| wear that it makes the whole model look like someone else...
| xwdv wrote:
| Best use of this is for social MMOs.
| BHSPitMonkey wrote:
| Spatial (a VR co-working app) does something similar to this,
| though a bit more simplistically (all you upload is a face pic;
| I think body height is determined at runtime based on how high
| the headset is from the floor).
|
| It did a pretty good job with pictures of Tommy Wiseau and
| Nicolas Cage in my testing, though it does raise the
| potentially creepy issue of impersonating non-celebrities in VR
| social environments.
| pradeepb30 wrote:
| Spatial avatar based video chat app was cool as well.
| pradeepb30 wrote:
| MMOs are something we are also thinking about! But we do have a
| strong feeling around "short animated scene creations" use
| case. Thank you so much for suggestion. Means a lot :)
| offtop5 wrote:
| As a game developer, do you have any type of API for me to be
| able to import user data. For example if users have an
| account with your service, it would be awesome for them to be
| able to import the model into my game. I would need something
| that works with unity, in fact if you could have that in your
| pipeline. Something like a pre-configured Unity Avatar
| pradeepb30 wrote:
| Introducing this as an API was something ppl have told us
| repeatedly. Our plan was to, later as we grow, come up with
| something like "Sign in with Highavenue" - this way users
| can export their data to any gaming/MMOs or any other
| application with just single button tap.
|
| And we can make sure it works cross platforms. We will
| collaborate soon on this :)
| offtop5 wrote:
| Internally have you tested the models with Unity?
| pradeepb30 wrote:
| Yes, but it does need some work though. :)
| thegeomaster wrote:
| Don't want to pretend I know the peculiarities of your
| case, but if people repeatedly ask for something in order
| to use your product, it might be a good idea to
| prioritize it more and build it ASSAP.
|
| I say this as an early employee of a startup that failed,
| where people have repeatedly asked us for a feature and
| we wanted to build it "later as we grow". We never got to
| that point because we never got enough users. Had we
| built the feature, we would've at least gotten users.
|
| "Sign in with Highavenue" doesn't sound too good at an
| early stage, to be honest. Even as a future plan. For
| game/AR/whatever developers, requiring their users to
| create an account with Highavenue will probably be a
| dealbreaker.
|
| I also notice you mention in another comment that your
| goal is to create a network around it, and that's why it
| requires a login. I admire the sentiment, but at this
| stage I don't think it's the way to go. I see a very cool
| tool that I'd take for a spin, but no reason why I'd join
| a network around this. I think, as a medium, 3D
| animations are far less general and expressive than
| video/audio/images [for the same amount of effort put
| into creating], so I'd be wary of trying to emulate what
| TikTok/Snapchat/Clubhouse did. It might very well be that
| the medium is different enough that no one can use their
| creativeness effectively with it, making it DoA as a
| social network per se.
|
| (Aside: we also had a mandatory login screen, and even
| with a landing page, when we implemented an automatic
| "guest mode" which dropped you into the webapp instantly,
| people actually started using it and signing up.)
|
| I'd say pack it up as an API, offer to developers at
| first. Then you're B2B and that's much easier to charge
| for than B2C. When you see cool stuff that developers do
| with it, you can partner with them, you can go consumer
| facing gradually (and with limited risk in case it
| doesn't work out) and you'll have some capital to put
| back into that growth.
|
| I see a lot of similarities to earlier me in your
| responses - you're very defensive of your work and the
| choices you made, and that's fine, but you're walking a
| fine line with just dismissing initial feedback because
| of the sunk cost fallacy. I was dead set on "listening to
| feedback" as well but ended up doing the same thing.
| Don't take any of this the wrong way, not trying to
| disparage or discourage, it's a cool product, and in
| terms of startups I know nothing on the grand scale of
| things. So if it feels right ignore all I said and best
| of luck. But also consider what I'm saying even for just
| a second :)
| pradeepb30 wrote:
| OMG, thank you so much for the detailed comment. This is
| super helpful. I'll definitely discuss about this with
| the team. And the plan of going b2b and then moving to
| b2c seems great as well. I'll do homework about this. Is
| there way to get in touch with you? Would love to discuss
| more and do some brainstorming :)
| thegeomaster wrote:
| Sure thing, my email is in my profile. Although I can't
| guarantee fast responses, and I might have come across as
| having more experience than I really do :)
| xwdv wrote:
| But why? Seems like you'd just hit some uncanny valley that
| way, people already have 3D bitmojis.
| pradeepb30 wrote:
| While this seems very similar to bitmoji but for real
| avatars, I think there are a lot of use cases that Snapchat
| hasn't tapped into. As move forward & With the models
| generated, - choose the model (you can even request your
| friend's) - select any 3D environment (a coffee shop or a
| riverside) - hop into it - start acting - & record
|
| Since we are bootstrapped we couldn't build everything at
| once. :)
|
| You might be right, B2B play seems straightforward. There
| is this powerful intuition that we can make it work this
| way. Thank you so much for the question.
| gitpusher wrote:
| Very cool! Heads up that I've been stuck on "Generating Head.
| (1/2)" for >10 minutes now. Should I restart the app + try again?
| pradeepb30 wrote:
| Really sorry - I can see others generating the model
| successfully. It would be great if you can please try it again
| by restarting the app. Thank you so much. While restarting the
| app shouldn't be the solution, bare with us at the moment. :(
| picodguyo wrote:
| Haven't been able to successfully log in (server issues?) but
| definitely a cool video.
|
| I'm guessing you didn't build the photos -> model tech from
| scratch in 10 weeks. What are you using for that piece?
| pradeepb30 wrote:
| - we already had some portions of the app here and there (like
| the video feed, search etc) so scrapped that up.
|
| - the core tool where generate the model was built with in 10
| weeks.
|
| - we actually wanted bring in flutter to improve the UI and
| smoothness of the app but that wasn't possible.
|
| - the head portion is from an API. & the body creation is ours.
| There is a few more things to be fixed.
|
| Thank you so much for the question.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2021-02-23 23:01 UTC)