Your AI characters can now stand in your actual room, and react to what’s in it! Simulon is back: turn a character image into a 3D “neural asset,” place it in the real world through your phone’s camera, act out the scene with your own camera move, and the app regenerates the take with the character responding to what you do and say. Also: a kitbash into Kling 4.0 and Genie 4, and Alibaba’s Apsara slide with Wan, Happy Horse and Happy Shrimp on the board. WHAT’S IN THIS ONE
- Simulon, back from 2023 (2.0 shipped October 9, Reality-Aware Rendering October 28): upload a character reference, it builds a 3D neural asset, you place, scale and rotate it in your real space through the phone camera, then generate. Not real time yet: you prompt the action, or shoot your take first and let it render.
- Flamethrower Girl, life-size at my bar: my camera move, my location, no world-model hallucination (the ball on the floor is really there). Mini version on the desk, then a jungle-attire run across the bar.
- Kitbash 1: the Simulon output into Kling 4.0 video-to-video, location swapped.
- Two characters at once: Renfield and Flamethrower Girl play tennis at the park (wonky, but consistent in the space). Then Flamethrower Girl walks Simulon’s library tiger through my living room, and the two interact without being asked.
- Isn’t this just reference-to-video? Mostly, yes (the back end feels Minimax-ish to me, a guess). The difference is blocking your characters on set, run-and-gun.
- Reality-Aware Rendering: the characters respond to what you do and say in the take. I poke the tiger and mini Flamethrower Girl with my finger. A mech goes aggro at Astro the cat, who could not care less.
- Renfield tends bar and reacts to my voice. The rum keeps disappearing.
- Roadmap: Simulon tells me voices and assignable personalities are coming. Their own demo shows a character taking spoken direction.
- Kitbash 2: a Simulon output into Genie 4, then a walk through the back rooms of my own house.
- Pricing: free to try on iPhone (100 starter credits, library characters only). Plus is $14.99 a month (your own characters from images or words, commercial use for individuals); Pro is $39.99 (3x the usage, business use). Android is next; Simulon tells me it’s waiting on Google.
- Alibaba’s Apsara slide: Wan, Happy Horse and Happy Shrimp on the model-family board. [Tim — “November” isn’t on the slide; keep it only with a source, linked below.]