Software to Make Your Head Spin
Ulead Systems is out with a program that turns photos into 3D images that you can rotate and turn every which way. It's called Face Factory. Ulead's Michael Downs...
"You just basically take two photos of a person, a front view and a side view, go into an effects station...you can combine endless distortions, lighting effects like a cube, an alien. And of course...the only reason anyone would want to do these sorts of things is to share them so we let them email them, create web pages from them, personalize screen savers. It's a lot of fun."
It is easy to use, but there's some pretty serious computing going on to make it happen...
"It takes the skin of someone basically, and creates a mesh of polygons and wraps that polygon mesh around the general shape of a human head."
Excuse me, my hair's a mesh. The results are lots of fun and the price is under forty dollars. Ulead is also the creator of a program called Cool 360 that lets you digitally stitch a series of photos together to make 360 degree panorama images. You don't need a digital camera. Scanned images or pictures developed onto disc will do.