AI startup Oddysee’s new tool can create realistic 3D worlds

Odysseya startup founded by self-driving pioneers Oliver Cameron and Jeff Hook development An AI-powered tool that can convert text or image into a 3D rendering.

The tool, called Explorer, is in some ways similar to the so-called World models Recently demonstrated by DeepMind, Laboratories of the worldAnd an arrogant Israeli Descartes. Given a caption such as “Japanese garden with rich green foliage,” Explorer can create an interactive scene in real time.

Odyssey claims that its tool is “specially tuned” to create realistic scenes. This is largely a result of the startup’s technical approach; The AI-powered Explorer has been trained on real-world landscapes It was seized Through a specially designed 360-degree camera system mounted on the backpack.

Odyssey says that any scene created with Explorer can be loaded into creative tools like Unreal Engine, Blender, and Adobe After Effects and edited manually. how? Explorer uses Gaussian patches, a decades-old volume rendering technique capable of reconstructing realistic scenes. Gaussian patches are widely supported in computer graphics tools.

“Early on, we’re excited to see the levels of 3D detail and fidelity that Explorer can actually achieve, and its potential for use in live-action movies, hyper-realistic gaming, and new forms of entertainment,” Odyssey wrote in an article. Blog post. “Despite early research, generative global motion, all 3D, holds exciting promise for enabling artists to generate and manipulate motion in new, more realistic ways, as well as providing precise control that is difficult to replicate in generative video models.”

Odyssey acknowledges that Explorer has many limitations today. The tool takes an average of 10 minutes to create scenes, for example, and its scenes are relatively low-resolution — and not devoid of distracting visual effects.

But the company says it has already seeded Explorer into production houses such as Garden Studios in the UK and a “growing group” of independent artists. Those interested in testing Explorer can apply to Odyssey Blog.

Creators may have mixed feelings about tools like Explorer, especially those in the video game and film industries.

A recently Game studios like Activision Blizzard, which has laid off dozens of workers, are using artificial intelligence to cut costs, increase productivity and compensate for attrition, a Wired investigation has found. And 2024 He studies Commissioned by the Animation Guild, a union representing Hollywood animators and cartoonists, it is estimated that more than 100,000 film, television, and animation jobs in the United States will be disrupted by artificial intelligence by 2026.

But Odyssey says it’s committed to collaborating with creative professionals, not replacing them. To that end, the company announced Wednesday that Ed Catmull, a Pixar co-founder and former head of Disney Animation Studios, has joined its board and invested in Odyssey.

“Generative world models are the latest major and unexplored frontier in all of artificial intelligence,” Odyssey wrote. “We aspire to worlds that build themselves, indistinguishable from reality, where new stories are born and remixed, where human and machine intelligence interact for pleasure or purpose. If all we end up achieving are incrementally better movies or games, then we will have failed.” .