VR in the workplace becomes more and more normal thanks to many high-quality apps such as Immersed. However, one of the annoying problems to work with VR head sets is to participate in video conferences and meetings with Zoom, Microsoft Teams, Google Meet and so on.
You should wear off your headsets or use virtual avatars with which you sometimes feel inappropriate at the scene.
In this case, the best solution is to use photo-realistic avatar such as “Best Self Avatar” to join Microsoft Teams meetings without wearing off headsets and showing your normal visualization even with smiles and nodding.
Here are the simple explanation of how you can use photo-realistic avatars in Microsoft Teams meetings.
0. Access to Best Self Avatar webpage, and register the account.
1. Create a new avatar on the web.
First thing you should do after login is to create a new avatar. After subscribing the license, you can create an avatar. Because Best Self Avatar (or “b12r” in abbreviation) requires to use your camera, please “Allow” to use your camera.
Then, b12r shows your camera, and captures various scenes such visemes (a, e, i, o, u respectively) and your smile, nod and finally the background.
Here are the samples of each image.
After you submit your all images to create an avatar, it takes about 10 minutes to generate your avatar from the captured images. In the mean time, proceed to the next section to download an app to prepare for your use in some video conferencing tools.
2. Download Mac/Win app for creating a virtual camera.
For using b12r on your video conferencing tools, you need to create a virtual camera on your local computer and send frames to it. B12r client apps take care of all of these works for you. Please download the app below based on your local environment.
After you install the client app, launch it and login with your account. Then automatically the app download the avatar info if you already set the avatar to use. If you don’t set the avatar to use yet, please follow the instruction below to set the avatar to use.
3. Specify an avatar to use on the web.
After an avatr is successfully generated on Step 1, its avatar appears on “Your Avatars” page.
Click the avatar and you can check each image components. On the right corner of this avatar detail page, there’s a button to “Use this Avatar”.
Click the button and you can set the avatar to use on your client computer.
You can check which avatar you are using on the avatars list of avatar detail page.
4. Set the virtual camera to use on Microsoft Teams.
Finally, set the virtual camera, and you can start using your avatar anywhere! For setting the virtual camera, launch the client app and log in to b12r client app first.
At the first time you login to the app, you are asked to allow the app to use microphone and keychain. The avatar is responding to the audio via microphone, and it stores credential information on keychain.
After allowing these functions, b12r start downloading your avatars and shows it in the app.
Finally, go to the video conferencing tools such as Zoom, Microsoft Teams and Google Meet and chooose “Best Self Avatar” from camera list and the avatar will appear.
