A startup is coaching an AI system that it claims will allow creators to generate cinematic worlds, with full management over the surroundings, characters, lighting, and movement. How? By having people strap cameras to their backs and hike around the globe.
Odyssey, based by self-driving pioneers Oliver Cameron and Jeff Hawke (Cameron was beforehand the VP of product at Cruise), says it’s created an “superior digital camera seize system” that may accumulate knowledge nearly anyplace an individual can attain. Weighing about 25 kilos, the system packs six cameras, two lidar sensors, and an inertial measurement unit.
Bearing a resemblance to Google’s Avenue View Trekker, the system can seize its environment in “3.5K decision” and 360 levels, with “physics-accurate” depth data metadata hooked up.
So what’s the purpose? Nicely, Odyssey says it’s taking knowledge from the system and feeding it by algorithms to “seize the fantastic particulars that make up our world.” Basically, the corporate’s producing digital reconstructions of real-world scenes a la Meta’s Hyperscape challenge — scenes with forests, caves, trails, seashores, glaciers, parks, buildings, and so forth.
Now, it’s not completely clear how these reconstructions will translate to higher generative instruments for creatives. Cameron and Hawke have beforehand stated that Odyssey has developed a number of generative AI fashions that create layers of visible element, together with object geometry, lighting, and movement, after which mix these right into a single digital “world” to create desired scenes.
Even the very best “world fashions” in the present day have limitations, nevertheless — and Odyssey doesn’t declare to have solved all these. However, it’s securing money to forge forward.
Odyssey in the present day introduced that it raised $18 million in a Sequence A funding spherical led by EQT Ventures with participation from GV and Air Avenue Capital. The brand new cash, which brings the corporate’s complete raised to $27 million, shall be put towards scaling up Odyssey’s knowledge assortment operations in California.
Odyssey plans to increase its knowledge assortment to different states and nations sooner or later — with privateness protections in place, one would hope. (Google’s Avenue View crew, for one, has discovered itself within the crosshairs of regulators for capturing pictures of public locations that violated bystanders’ privateness.)
“We predict it is going to be unimaginable for generative fashions to generate Hollywood-grade worlds that really feel alive with out coaching on an unlimited quantity of wealthy, multimodal real-world 3D knowledge,” the corporate wrote in a publish on its weblog. “We imagine a sophisticated generative world-building mannequin will unlock a greater option to create movie, video games, and extra.”
