all about Eve.(Company Business and Marketing)

A LIFELIKE VIRTUAL `PERSONALITY' BECOMES A RISING STAR

She hosts her own radio show every Saturday morning. In February she appeared on the cover and a fashion spread in the popular French women's magazine Madame Figaro. She has a modest flat in Paris's 11th arrondissement, an agent with the Parisian talent agency Rouge, and a part-time job as a waitress at L'Opus Lounge, a trendy Paris bar.

Her name is Eve Laura Solal. And she's arguably the most humanlike virtual character ever created.

Eve is the brainchild of Paris-based Attitude Studio, a facility formed a year ago to provide end-to-end virtual character development services for applications in television, film, the Internet, and video games. So far, Eve is Attitude's first finished creation, but a full-length all-3D film starring some of the studio's other digital characters is already in the works, and a deal for a second 3D film is being negotiated.

"The demand for lifelike virtual 3D characters is very high today," says Marc Miance, chairman and managing director of Attitude. "We formed this company and developed our own technology to meet this demand."

Attitude's technology, called emotion mapper, is a set of tools that the company developed to work within Alias|Wavefront's Maya to perfect motion data that's been captured with Attitude's Oxford Metrics Vicon motion-capture system. Attitude created Eve last year as a way to demonstrate the emotion mapper tools--and to promote the company and its motion-capture, modeling, and animation services--at last November's Salon du Satis, a trade show and exhibition held in Paris. For the demo, Attitude created a 1-minute, 40-second video clip starring the 3D Eve as she was interviewed by a journalist. The demo was shot from the point of view of the reporter, so viewers saw Eve against a live-action background.

Emotional Appeal