Odysseya startup founded by self-driving pioneers Oliver Cameron and Jeff Hawke Development an AI-powered tool that may convert text or a picture right into a 3D rendering.
The tool, called Explorer, is comparable in some ways to the so-called world models recently demonstrated by DeepMind, World Labs and Israeli upstart Decart. With a headline like “A Japanese garden with lush, green foliage,” Explorer can create an interactive, real-time scene.
Odyssey claims its tool is “particularly tailored” to create photorealistic scenes. This is essentially a consequence of the startup's technical approach; The AI that powers the Explorer was trained on real-world landscapes captured using the corporate's custom-designed backpack-mounted 360-degree camera system.
Odyssey says each scene generated by Explorer may be loaded into creative tools like Unreal Engine, Blender and Adobe After Effects after which edited by hand. How? Explorer uses Gaussian Splats, a decades-old volume rendering technique that may be used to reconstruct realistic scenes. Gaussian splats are widely supported in computer graphics tools.
“Although it's still early, we're excited to see the degrees of 3D detail and fidelity Explorer can already achieve and its potential to be used in live-action movies, hyper-realistic games, and recent types of entertainment,” Odyssey wrote in a single Blog post. “Generative world movements, all in 3D, have been in research before, but show promise in giving artists the flexibility to create and manipulate movement in recent and more realistic ways, along with providing fine-tuned control that may be achieved in generative Video models are difficult to breed.”
Odyssey recognizes that Explorer has several limitations today. For example, the tool takes a mean of 10 minutes to generate scenes, and the scenes are relatively low resolution – and never free from distracting visual artifacts.
But the corporate says it has already passed Explorer on to production houses reminiscent of Garden Studios within the UK and a “growing group” of independent artists. Anyone who would love to check the Explorer can apply to Odyssey Blog.
Creatives can have mixed feelings about tools like Explorer – especially those within the video game and film industries.
A youngest Wired research found that game studios like Activision Blizzard, which have laid off large numbers of employees, are using AI to chop corners, increase productivity and compensate for turnover. And a 2024 study Commissioned by the Animation Guild, a union representing Hollywood animators and cartoonists, it was estimated that over 100,000 U.S. film, television and animation jobs can be impacted by AI by 2026.
But Odyssey says it's committed to working with creative professionals — not replacing them. To that end, the corporate announced Wednesday that Ed Catmull, one among Pixar's co-founders and former president of Walt Disney Animation Studios, has joined its board and invested in Odyssey.
“Generative world models are the latest and most unexplored major frontier in all of artificial intelligence,” Odyssey wrote. “We strive for worlds that construct themselves, that feel indistinguishable from reality, where recent stories emerge and are remixed, where human and machine intelligence interact for fun or purpose.” If, ultimately, we just incrementally improve If we reach movies or games, we won’t have made it.”
Cameron was previously VP of Product at Cruise, while Hawke was a founding researcher at Wayve. To date, Odyssey has raised $27 million from investors including EQT Ventures, GV and Air Street Capital.
