April 20, 2007 — (WEB HOST INDUSTRY REVIEW) — Budget hosting provider Freewebs (freewebs.com) announced on Thursday it has added image manipulation tool Fotowoosh (fotowoosh.com) to its Web publishing toolkit.
Freewebs says Fotowoosh automatically transforms standard 2D images of outdoor scenes into 3D ‘pop-up’ models, like those one would find in a children’s book. Fotowoosh labels each region of an outdoor image as ground, vertical, or sky, providing the necessary information to determine where to ‘cut’ and ‘fold’ in the image. The model is then popped up, and the image overlayed onto the 3D model as a texture map. The procedure has been demonstrated to work on about a third of all photographs tested and further development is expected to improve the success rate, says Fotowoosh.
“For the first time, many outdoor digital images, whether inside Freewebs’ 17 million member community or anywhere on the Web, can now be automatically converted into 3D,” says Shervin Pishevar, president of Freewebs. “Fotowoosh will be widgetized to allow anyone, from local businesses, real estate companies to everyday people, to publish and virally share user-generated 3D images anywhere on the Web.”
Freewebs has also recently announced it has added ‘widgetized’ Freewebs Forums to its catalog of Web site building tools.
