Issue 004: Become the virtual Lebron 🏀

What’s up Woze community! Welcome to issue #2023-004, the fourth in the books🔥

Today, we’re taking a look at:

✦ Create your own “metaverse” 🌍

✦ Generative assets now, generative “quirks” soon 🧬

✦ Become the virtual Lebron 🏀

✦ and RobloxAI!

ℹ️ If you find interesting things on the web that I should include, tweet me @emergingtechguy , message me on LinkedIn, OR email me at [email protected] including the '🗞' emoji in the subject line.

Now, get your boards ready and let’s ride the tide! 🏄‍♂️

1. Create your own “metaverse”

BlockadeLabs is “building the text-to-game future”. Its Skybox lab is currently in public beta access.

You can describe what you would like your world to look like, and after a few seconds, you’ll see the results of your prompt.

I’d advise to treat any Generative AI like a rookie, if you haven’t used any yet - the more descriptive you are, the closer you get to your desired output.

Here’s an example of my prompts after using the lite version:

Did I forget to mention that it’s in 3D??

You can try over it here - no signup required.

Give it a few spins, and reply with the world you’ve come up with!

2. Generative assets now, generative “quirks” soon

It seems like the theme of the week is gaming because leonardo.ai is next up!

This is a demo example that shows that LeonardAI is capable of.

You can create new variations of your character by using images as references.

I’ve not requested access, but from what I see, LeonardoAI is setting itself as the toolkit for generative assets.

With more and more new technologies like these, I can see the generational systemisation of digital assets be achieved in the not-so-distant future.

What this means is the programmatic capability of digital assets bring forth new capabilities and features as they evolve to the next generation (hereditary), and/or are fused together.

A prominent example is the popular Japanese cartoon, My Hero Academia, where “quirks” are hereditary from your parents, creating an even more powerful “quirk” or even birth a new one altogether, depending of the affinity of the parents’ quirks.

Now.

Imagine you playing an XR (extended reality) game.

There are a finite set of classes ex. tank, healer, damage dealers, assassin etc...

And you happen to stumble across two “legendary” grade skills, potions or equipment, that can help you gain an advantage over the other players?

This is one of the trending themes in Asian entertainment content, and I really see this being possible very soon, although it may take some time.

It’s an idea I thought of working on - who knows, maybe some time this year?👀

3. Become the virtual Lebron 🏀

Last Friday, the NBA commissioner Adam Silver unveiled the new immersive streaming experience alongside NBA host Ahmad Rashad.

This comes after collaboration with the team at Polycam.

Polycam make LiDAR scanning and photogrammetry accessible to everyone.

With Polycam you can:

1. Use your phone to scan the world around you and get a 3D representation of it.

2. Use your phone to get accurate 3D models out of anything

3. Explore thousands of free 3D models from the community

4. See your 3D models in Augment Reality

5. And even use your drone image to get generate 3D scans of entire buildings 🤯

But let’s continue.

This new experience allows you insert yourself into NBA games by taking a 3D scan of yourself, that is then replicated into the virtual canvas.

Now you can view yourself as Lebron, Curry or whoever is your fave basketball athlete in the league.

Maybe I’ll do this and tell my kids their dad was in the NBA.

But what do I say when they realise and see I “got” shorter 🤣?

Can’t wait to see where immersive technology goes in 2023 🔥

4. RobloxAI

Roblox is focusing its efforts in developing a set of tools that will allow “every user to be a creator”.

Some of these tools include ability to create materials from given prompts that can change the colours and textures of in-game assets, and the capability of using AI to complete code.

With all these generative AI changes left and right, it’ll be interesting how people adapt to these shifts.

Coming to a kid near you.

BONUS: Update on Gen-1 from RunwayML

Hey team, do you remember how we covered Gen-1 as “The Midjourney of Video Generative AI” in issue #003?

Well, it seems like people are creating some cool experiments with that find.

Don Allen, a fellow creator in the emerging tech space, created this with Gen-1 and the results are mind-blowing:

BONUS: Turn your scribbles into digital art in seconds

Last week, I stumbled across Scribble Diffusion by @zeke on Twitter. It turns your scribbles into digital art in seconds.

I took it for a spin and created “a goofy cyber owl” - here are the results:

Try it out over here and let me see what you create!

BONUS: Side hustle bros and the ChatGPT-Crank-O-Matic 📈?

It seems like the side hustle bros are cranking ChatGPT to the max, as Reuters reported that there are about 200 Kindle books authored & co-authored by ChatGPT, but the number could be way higher since Amazon’s policy does not allow for the disclosure of the use of AI, according to this article.

Here are the top 3 newsletters I’d recommend for the week:

Developer’s Corner

This week I’ve kickstarted development for one of my new projects, Kirvanos. I’ve already begun doing outreach via Twitter, and intend to do some more via LinkedIn soon.

I’ve also finally pushed the new version of my site over at enrictrillo.com - there’s still some changes I need to implement (not good on mobile atm).

Before I forget.

I’m also going to kickstart my YouTube channel by the way.

So far, I’ve got the promo video I made for my “ChatGPT 2 Markdown” extension, but I plan to post content like tutorials, experiments and even updates of the latest tech - the visual version of my newsletters, basically.

You can subscribe here

I’ve also been playing with Midjourney - these are some of my recent creations.

That’s it for today, crew 👋

See you next Wednesday :)

Enric (EmergingTechGuy)

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