Blog post 1
When a person looked at a computer three decades ago, he saw lines of code, a representation of his hard work at producing something that simplified an otherwise manual and repetitive task.
When a person looked at a computer three decades ago, he saw lines of code, a representation of his hard work at producing something that simplified an otherwise manual and repetitive task.
When a person looked at a computer two decade ago, he saw colors, buggy software, and the emergence of the video game craze that caused many to abandon their badminton rackets in favor of staring at pixels for a sense of fulfillment.
When a person looked at a computer a decade ago, he saw more vibrant colors, 3D images, and an electronic network that not only simplified the world, but simplified our minds as well.
When a person looks at a computer today, he sees alternative reality, a world that is gradually blending into our real world and blurring the boundaries, one that is creating a huge consumer market for virtual items and even concepts. No longer is the entire human race focused on fueling our real-world economy in the ways of real labour, real production, and real consumption; a massive portion of our labour force is now targeting a completely nonmaterial world, creating nonmaterial objects to satisfy the desires of people who project their reality onto a computer screen or TV.
Mixamo, a website dedicated to the virtual creation and exchange of simple animations based on 3D humanoid and some quadruped models, is a prime example of the increasing dominance of this projection of real life objects and even concepts into the virtual world. Creators, often choosing to remain anonymous, are able to create 3D poses and animations and export them into universal formats such as the popular Biovision Hierarchical Motion Capture Data file (.bvh), the Collaborative Design Activity file (.dae), or FiLMBOX file (.FBX). After creation, the user is then able to re-upload them into design software such as Maya, Poser, Unity, or 3DMAX, or for direct use in online platforms that support avatar customization such as Second Life. All of this comes at a price however, so not only are creators fueling with imagination, they are fueling Mixamo's pockets with cash as well. Different pricing arrangements can be made, and there also seems to be a market of virtual avatar animation on sites such as Animeeple, where users buy and sell creations with real money.
However the most attractive feature of Mixamo is the ability to transform real-life motion into virtual avatar motion. Mixamo owns a motion capture lab where creators are able to capture real-life movements and transcribe them into keyframes in electronic format.
This integration of reality into alternate reality is making it possible for a person to have a self-defined "identity" in places where their physical bodies and minds do not exist. One is no longer "training on a sandbag" for physical exercise, but for a parallel dimension where their avatars may be training for physical exercise. Why live the harshness of the real world when any fantasy is a reality inside a computer screen or TV? Why endure physical stress when the mind can simply relax in a virtual world, relying solely on the perception of the eyes? Mixamo is one of the many contributors to the blurring boundaries of reality, where humans no longer only create and live on mother earth, but in the timeless and limitless entity that is cyberspace.
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