Creating Unique Identity (Comprehensive Blender)

Comprehensive Blender

The comprehensive mode (a.k.a Digital DNA Blender) allows you to create a Digital Person identity by simply blending the facial features of a collection of scanned data from actual people from different ethnicities and geographies. This is a fun tool to create a Digital Person that reflects your brand and use case.

The Digital DNA Blender tool can be accessed from the Digital DNA Studio dashboard under New Custom DP > Comprehensive. This opens the Digital DNA Blender tool and shows the face of Feminine 1 set to 100%.

Using Digital DNA Blender

Digital DNA Blender is a powerful modeling tool that makes it easy to create, transform, and edit a digital person by simply blending various options available in the tool.

1. Icons to choose the face, eyes, nose, mouth, head shape, hairstyle, skin color and texture, clothing, and background

2. Features to allow the blending of different masculine and feminine facial features

3. Slider allows you to pick a numeric value by dragging the slider along a horizontal line

4. Percentage or weight of features in the blend

5. Digital DNA Blender is not real-time, so after any change to the settings, click Apply Changes to view the changes on the Digital Person

6. Finalize takes you to the publishing page of your newly created Digital Person to Digital DNA project creation screen

7. Exit takes you back to the dashboard

Guidelines

• If you start the blender and have all phenotypes set to 0, the system will show an average of all the phenotypes and display a blended face.

• If you set any one phenotype to a number above 0 (and rest to 0) then it automatically becomes 100% of that phenotype.

• If you set multiple phenotypes to above 0 then it'll blend it according to the values you set so you won't get 100% of any phenotype.

• Since Digital DNA Blender does not yet come with a save/load functionality, in the interim we recommend you keep notes on what features you have used for a particular blend.

Best Practices

1. For the overall blend, aim for around 3-5 features (sliders) to be involved in your blend. Set one to be dominant.

2. For regional blending, you can push this number higher. 5-7 features (sliders) can be used to get the desired shape, but use them in small or differing amounts

3. Setting 5 sliders to 100% will just average all four out, so try to weight the sliders where some are dominant

4. Some shapes/features (sliders) are more masculine, some are more feminine. For regions like eyes, nose, and to a lesser extent mouth, this gender difference doesn’t matter too much. However, for regions that can dramatically change the bone structure (Overall Blend &  Skull shape), this gender difference can be quite noticeable.

How do I get started?

1. Start with the aspects of the appearance that are dominant and have the biggest impact on the person’s appearance - skin texture, hairstyle, and in certain circumstances clothing and background color.

2. Next, work on bone structure - the face icon (Overall face) and the head icon (Skull shape). 

3. Next, work on the mouth shape - this can be influenced by the Skull shape so you may need to go back and adjust your skull shape slightly

4. Next, work on the nose shape

5. Lastly, work on the eyes. The eyes are where you will likely spend a lot of your time and can have a huge impact on the final result.

Overall Face

The below table shows a preview of the characteristics of each phenotype set to 100% with a random choice of skin texture and hairstyle. This might help choose the characteristics (such as the face, eyes, nose, mouth, and head shape) of each phenotype into your unique Digital Person.

FEMININE 1	FEMININE 2	MASCULINE 1
FEMININE 3	MASCULINE 2	FEMININE 4
FEMININE 5	FEMININE 6	FEMININE 7
MASCULINE 3	FEMININE 8	FEMININE 9

Eyes, nose, mouth, and head shape

There are indicative images for the eyes, nose, mouth, and head shape sliders. This makes it easier to decide what kind of features you want in your Digital Person. 

Hairstyle and Color

Each hairstyle has a set of hair colors associated with it.

Skin Type

Skin type chosen determines the masculine and feminine skin tones. The feminine skin type comes with basic makeup such as eyeliner and light blush. The below image illustrates the two masculine options of skin texture we offer, and the rest are feminine.

Make-up

Digital People are created with a natural look. To enhance the appearance, you can use the makeup options Entertainment, Professional, and Retail with varied intensity based on the use case.

Body and Clothing

• Body type - the masculine or feminine body option slightly changes the thickness of the neck and shoulder mass to match the gender of the Digital Person

• Shirt style- we offer a polo neck and round neck T-shirt style for masculine body types

• Shirt color-there are 5 color options but you can customize clothing by downloading the photoshop template

• Shirt Texture- upload the custom clothing texture you create. This will override the shirt color chosen.
  When creating a custom Digital Person, there is an option to add Custom Clothing Texture using the Photoshop template. You can add clothing patterns, shirt colors, and company logos to create an original, on-brand shirt

Background

Part of creating a custom Digital Person involves choosing a background color. Consider how your brand colors will incorporate across the appearance of your Digital Person and the UI colors. The comprehensive Blender currently supports RGB, HSL, and HEX.

Accessories

• Name Badge - To further customize a shirt, you can add name tags in addition to the clothing patterns, shirt colors, and company logos. 

Publishing

When you are satisfied with your custom Digital person, make sure you have noted the blends and options on each tab before you publish.

1. Click Finalize at the top right-hand corner to get to the publish screen.

2. Enter a Name for the custom Digital Person.
When naming your Digital Person, take into account the Digital Person identity and the sound/mood of the name. Other factors for determining a name could include an existing company mascot, role model, or personality.

3. Click Publish.
Note that the building process takes around 30 to 40 minutes, you will receive an email notification once completed. The custom Digital Person will be available in the Digital DNA studio to be used in any project within the organization.

Limitations

• Changes made to the options do not apply dynamically unless you click the Apply Changes button

• Cannot pause the movement of the Digital person on the screen

• Cannot move or zoom into the Digital person

• Cannot save a work in progress creation or undo a previous change

• Cannot edit a published Digital Person

FAQs

How do I create great-looking Digital People?

Please watch our tutorial here.

I want to create an older/younger looking Digital Person, how do I do that?

On the facial structure:

Children have larger eyes and larger skulls compared to adults whose eyes and skulls are smaller.

On the skin:

Look for more defined wrinkles under the eyes (eyebags), around the mouth, and any permanent facial wrinkles that appear on a neutral face to indicate age.

Youthful skin has a lot more elasticity and is unlikely to retain wrinkles when neutral.

I want to recreate a preset from the Simple mode in the Comprehensive Blender, how do I do that?

We are planning on building a feature to allow for exactly that, but in the meantime, this spreadsheet contains all the recipes for the Presets and also any Legacy Digital People we have created.

How do I share my custom Digital Person with a colleague?

We’re currently working on a sharing feature. In the meantime, our suggested workaround is to note down the slider names and their corresponding values in a spreadsheet.

Can I delete a custom Digital Person after I’ve made it?

Not yet, this feature is coming soon.