April 2024
Here are five tech releases that have caught our eye this month. From super-fast character animation to the first human chatbot with emotional intelligence, the innovative new releases in 2024 just keep on coming….
Animotive is a real-time immersive animation tool that allows users to create characters, animate them through VR and export the results quickly and easily.
Animators are able to collaborate remotely, enabling flexibility while creating projects. It’s being touted as a cost-effective solution to animation and a new way to join creative forces even when in different parts of the world.
Switchlight, a new tool from Beeble.ai, unlocks the ability to edit lighting in videos. Creators are able to shoot on a green screen and then edit the lighting in post-production. It will blend AI into rendering, allowing users to relight their footage. It will also feature removal tools, as well as Blender and Unreal Engine plugins.
Switchlight has just launched, and, after a lot of industry buzz for the Beta, it will be exciting to see it in wider use.
Aimator is an AI-powered tool that allows animators to significantly speed up the character animation process. The software consists of two main tools, the ‘Inbetweener’ and the ‘Anim Styler’. The former focuses on creating character animations based on selected key poses, while the latter achieves the same results by using motion capture data.
Aimator’s goal is to use generative AI to automate tasks that once took hours to complete, by adding the tool as a plugin to any other software. They’re not quite there yet, as it’s currently only available as a web-based tool. But watch this space as the company aims to launch their Beta version in the near future.
DNEG acquires Ziva license from Unity
VFX and animation studio DNEG have acquired an exclusive licence to use Ziva from the real-time development platform Unity. Offering an impressive toolset for digitally creating characters, Ziva will no doubt play a key role in artists being able to craft even more realism into their projects.
DNEG and Ziva have a long collaborative history, as the two companies have already worked together on numerous projects like Venom, Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power, and Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom.
Voice AI tools are increasingly commonplace in our daily lives. Most of us will interact with Amazon’s Alexa or Apple’s Siri on a regular basis. However, these tools are often criticised for an inability to express emotions or interpret a user’s current state of mind. That is the main reason why AI still hasn’t been incorporated into certain customer service settings.
However, Hume AI is aiming to transform this by being one of the first AI chatbots with emotional intelligence. Founded in 2021 by Alan Cowen Hume has been programmed to understand a variety of emotions, such as frustration and joy. It is able to understand the speaker’s tone of voice and respond appropriately, even incorporating sarcasm and jokes into the responses.
Our take
AI continues to dominate new tech releases across the creative industries and we’re seeing impressive new tools coming into play across the animation and VFX industry.
Stay tuned for more updates on top tech in the coming months. In the meantime, you can check out other Grammatik blogs!
March 2024
With 2024 already shaping up to be a year of fast-evolving AI, VR, and AR tech, we take a dive into the top 5 tech releases that have caught our eye. From the first virtual production tool that runs on Gen-AI to ‘Disney’s HoloTile Floor’, the year has already turned heads with a procession of eye-catching-innovations.
Will Cuebric’s advanced AI tools be a game changer for the cinematic and creative industries?
Crafting immersive 2.5D cinematic environments is now faster and easier thanks to Cuebric and its AI tools. From image generation to image segmentation, superscaling and image inpainting, you can go from concept to camera in minutes. Many have referred to the technology as a breakthrough, especially for studios. Just imagine a director having the ability to change between environments or times of the day at the touch of a button. And then seeing in real-time through the camera exactly how it would look. The Cuebric technology is definitely going to be an exciting one to keep an eye on.
It’s already generated much debate and interest in the tech space and beyond. But will the Vision Pro herald a new dawn of ‘spatial computing’? The jury is still out and the reception has been mixed. Either way, we’re excited to see how the tech evolves and hope it helps open up this space to industry and consumers alike.
Lanny Smoot, a Disney Imagineer, will be the first Disney employee – besides Walt himself – to be inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame. Why such an accolade? Well, Lanny’s latest project for Disney brings VR to a whole new level. The HoloTile Floor is described by Disney as the “world’s first multi-person, omni-directional, modular, expandable, treadmill floor.” If you’ve seen the movie Ready Player One, we are essentially living the tech advancements of that.
The floor itself, which is made up of many micro tiles, not only helps elevate the experience of VR and real-time movement – minus the dangers of walking into things – but allows a player to walk any distance without actually moving from the centre of the floor. But its capabilities don’t stop there. Not only does it give players the freedom to walk around endlessly without moving from the spot they’re in, but actually helps to move objects too.
The possibilities the Disney HoloTile Floor brings to the cinematic industry are endless, and we’re beyond excited to see how this plays a part in gaming and content creation going forward.
The drive to really nail AR glasses continues. Snapchat’s release of the ‘Spectacles’ back in 2016 didn’t take off the way they hoped, so the goal to make AR glasses functional has continued.
The TCL RayNeo X2 AR glasses are not only designed to enhance your everyday communications and activities but are also a perfect use for education, gaming, entertainment, and training, with a variety of applications for any and everyone.
What previously seemed a bit sci-fi has turned into a reality with Lenovo’s new release. A year after the computing giant showed off its R&D capabilities with the rollable laptop with an extendable screen, Lenovo has developed a 17.3-inch transparent display laptop. It’s a screen you can peer straight through. Its MicroLED display is the key highlight of this, as it offers 55% transparency when off, and when the pixels light up, it becomes fully opaque.
But what’s the benefit?
Developers explained that its main audience is digital artists, giving them the ability to see the world behind the laptop’s screen while sketching it on its lower half. Lenovo’s Executive Director, Tom Butler has gone as far as to say that the transparent laptop is a form of augmented reality.
Our verdict
It’s clear that AI will be at the heart of a lot of the new tech appearing in 2024. Alongside AI, Augmented Reality seems to also be creeping up the ranks this year as many new technologies will be centred around AR developments and many projections for mixed reality multi-sensory technology and so much more. We’ll be keeping a regular eye on what’s new and noteworthy as they come online.
Working on a new piece of impressive tech in 2024 that you want us to talk about? Get in touch below!
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