All you have to do is stand in front of a webcam, make crazy faces, and the video replaces you with an animated character in real time. The technology created by MashMe recognizes body movements, facial expressions and your voice. Your robot or dinosaur can look happy, sad, or angry.
MashMe offers many different environments to play around with, like taking swim lessons with Greg in the blue lagoon, dance with Kohaku Otori on the sunny streets of Cartoon town, or watch Taco Rex struggle with a candy piñata in the Dino desert. All environments are 3D and you have the ability to position characters anywhere.
The Croatia-based MashMe has been trying to perfect the technology for two and a half years. The company launched a Kickstarter campaign on Thursday. So far, the company has 217 backers and have only reached $12,446 of their $50,000 goal. With 27 days to go, MashMe is getting closer to their goal. CEO Darian Skarica said, “Our vision is to become an app anybody in the world can use to create Shrek or Frozen at home without having any prior technical skills.”
MashMe is offering two editions: MashMe Hero is for non-commercial use, while MashMe Extreme is for professional and commercial use. With MashMe Hero, you can animate any character, choose any environment, and pick moves from their motion packs. With MashMe Hero, you will have access to a batch of characters and environments. For $5,000 you can even generate a customer character.
MashMe will be available as a Windows application, and will support webcam and Kinect cameras for tracking. As stretch goals, the company is planning MashMe mobile versions.
