Photo: Screenshot of a video posted on the State Forestry and Grassland Administration website
China's State Forestry and Grassland Administration, China Media Group and internet giant Tencent on Wednesday unveiled the world's first virtual panda, in which artificial intelligence (AI) has successfully recreated the cuteness of a giant panda.
The virtual panda IP is based on Tencent's technology, which has produced an ultra-high resolution reconstruction of the giant panda's body and over 2 million hairs. Tencent's large-scale model, “Hunyuan,” enables the panda to talk and promote scientific knowledge, according to the NFRA website.
Under the professional guidance of the China Panda Conservation and Research Center, Tencent used high-fidelity modeling technology to carry out complex geometric detail processing on the more than 2 million hair strands covering the virtual panda, making the hair texture and dynamic process more realistic.
Based on the actual physiological structure of the giant panda, using intelligent bone connection and Super 3A film-level high-precision biological rendering, the details of bones and muscles in the giant panda's movements are restored.
The virtual pandas also have a “cloud habitat,” which utilises high-fidelity technology to create a 1:1 recreation of the environment of the Wolong Panda Nature Reserve, simulating 79 species of real plants, rocks, waterfalls and streams.
Users can interact with the virtual pandas on the mobile app by feeding and chatting with them.
“Don't envy the people of Sichuan, you can have your own pet panda,” said one comment on Sina Weibo.
Users can interact with the AI panda through a mobile app. Picture: Screenshot of a video published on the NFGA website
(Web editors: Wu Chaolan and Liang Jun)
