Talk about a luxurious soak in the tub. The Amaltea bathtub, designed by Baldi of Florence, Italy, is made entirely of the precious purple gem amethyst, and adorned with 24-karat gold-plated legs. Matching lotion dispenser, soap dish and tumbler are also available. Now there's no reason for a bather ever to get out (€95,000; baldi.biz).
Emily - the woman in the above animation - was produced using a new modelling technology that enables the most minute details of a facial expression to be captured and recreated.
She is considered to be one of the first animations to have overleapt a long-standing barrier known as 'uncanny valley' - which refers to the perception that animation looks less realistic as it approaches human likeness.
Researchers at a Californian company which makes computer-generated imagery for Hollywood films started with a video of an employee talking. They then broke down down the facial movements down into dozens of smaller movements, each of which was given a 'control system'.
The team at Image Metrics - which produced the animation for the Grand Theft Auto computer game - then recreated the gestures, movement by movement, in a model. The aim was to overcome the traditional difficulties of animating a human face, for instance that the skin looks too shiny, or that the movements are too symmetrical.
"Ninety per cent of the work is convincing people that the eyes are real," Mike Starkenburg, chief operating officer of Image Metrics, said.
"The subtlety of the timing of eye movements is a big one. People also have a natural asymmetry - for instance, in the muscles in the side of their face. Those types of imperfections aren't that significant but they are what makes people look real."
See the world below you with remarkable clarity in this 2 person canoe. This hard shell transparent canoe provides 100% visability. It weighs only 40 lbs., and is lighter than most aluminum or wood canoes.
The AirPiano is an innovative musical interface which allows playing and controlling software instruments simply by moving hands in the air.
Above the AirPiano is a virtual matrix of keys and faders, each assigned with MIDI messages and ready to be triggered. The length of a triggered note is equivalent to the time a hand is placed on the corresponding virtual key. This is also confirmed by LED feedback.
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