Yahoo Music & Nvidia launch animated music video tool

Yahoo Music & Nvidia launch animated music video tool

Yahoo Music

BANGALORE: Yahoo! Music, the Internet's number one site for music content, and Nvidia Corporation have announced "Yahoo! Artist Mods," a new program that lets consumers create unique animated music videos by combining hot music titles with interactive digital animation.

Yahoo! Music will promote Yahoo! Artist Mods throughout the extensive Yahoo! network, including front page placement on Yahoo!. The selection of digitized music videos will be updated regularly at http://music.yahoo.com/promos/artistmods, a click away for the more than 23 million unique users who visit Yahoo! Music each month. Yahoo! Artist Mods will also join the rest of Yahoo! Music videos in high rotation.

"Yahoo! Artist Mods is the perfect blend of two favorite pastimes - watching music videos and playing video games," stated Yahoo! Music GM Dave Goldberg. "We're excited to be the first to bring this cutting-edge technology online and give users control of their music content experience."

ModMaker was developed for Yahoo! Music by Big Bear Entertainment using Nvidia Quadro professional graphics technology. ModMaker achieves optimal performance when played back on PCs equipped with Nvidia GeForce graphics. Tony Shiff, president of Big Bear Entertainment, commented: "Nvidia gave us the power to create fully animated music videos in weeks, rather than months."

Yahoo! Artist Mods premiered with two videos: "Just Stop" by Disturbed and "Good Times" by Tommy Lee. Three more videos, including ones featuring platinum artists Sean Paul and Lil' Wayne, will follow in the upcoming weeks to complete the five-part series, states an official release.

Yahoo! Artist Mods showcases today's coolest music video artists using digitized models of the artists, stage sets, and instruments. To become "virtual directors," with control over backgrounds, lighting, and camera angles, users can download the ModMaker rendering engine from the NvidianZone Web site. Once a new video is finished, users can replay their creation and share it with a friend by email, the release adds.