Yep, Microsoft is at it again (actually MS research to be more precise). Show up at Siggraph, present a juicy paper, get everyone salivating and then, well…..not sure…..hide :-). I don’t get it, I’ll give you an example, couple of years ago a bunch of MS research guys showed up at Siggraph in Boston (I think) and showed this amazing application — PhotoSynth — that would stitch pictures taken by random tourists from different internet sources into a brilliant 3D model. It was fantastic, but other than a demo application, it’s no where to be found.
MS, are you listening…..You’re a Software company, stop producing software noone wants/needs (Vista/Office anyone?) and realize some of these apps the research people are working on.
Anyways, rant off. Now for this years amazing app. The tool is called Unwrap Mosaic and is described as Photoshop of video editing tools. Watch the video here. Imagine being able to take a video and changing something inside it just like you would in photoshop…..without having to go to every single frame of that video. The technology behind UM allows for changes by unwrapping the objects contained in the video into a flat image. It would be incredibly difficult to update the video in its original form, but making objects flat allows the new objects to be mapped into the correct positions. In the old days (like 1-2 years ago) 3D artists had to manually map things in 3D onto models and then composit them into the video…..well no more. This is amazing….koodoos to MS research. More info here.