New modeling technology breathes life into animation

Ask any animation modeler about the "uncanny valley," and you're sure to get at least a grimace, if not a groan. Said term describes the long-standing barrier which refers to the perception that "animation looks less realistic as it approaches human likeness." Image Metrics is hoping that a newfangled approach used to create Emily (pictured) will finally allow animations to look more like humans and less like "corpses." As you could probably surmise, the secret is the tech's ability to survey and replicate the most subtle of movements, though even Raja Koduri, chief technology officer in graphics at AMD, doesn't see the line between reality and fiction being blurred before 2020. We'll see what Emily's posse has to say about that.

[Thanks, Przemek]

[konshuss @ Aug 19th 2008 10:32AM]

so now they no longer look like corpses, they look like burn victims who've been accused of farting?

[Kyle @ Aug 19th 2008 10:32AM]

Good Christ that's a creepy picture.

[Will H. @ Aug 19th 2008 10:43AM]

Kill it, Kill it!

[Anand D @ Aug 19th 2008 10:53AM]

Take a look at the Video. It looks very real

[Blackstar @ Aug 19th 2008 12:21PM]

Yes.... and soon every porn actor's face will be a "happy face".

[CraigJ @ Aug 19th 2008 1:16PM]

That picture is of a wire frame. Watch the video.

[chef @ Aug 20th 2008 1:50AM]

He who smelt it, dealt it.

[hazard @ Aug 20th 2008 4:02AM]

yeah pretty shabby compared to what LightStage can achieve

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bz7AukqqaDQ

[HektikLyfe @ Aug 20th 2008 7:32PM]

She's got the "Shannon Doherty left eye lower than the right eye" thing going for her. You'd think with all that computing power they could get their modeling straight. :)

[JViz @ Aug 19th 2008 10:54AM]

Agreed. They're definitely not out of the uncanny valley, yet.

[madgamer @ Aug 19th 2008 12:41PM]

Did you watch the video? It looks to me like they flew right past the uncanny valley to photorealism. There is more on this on youtube btw from the amd cinema 2.0 demo, where they show realtime lighting etc. It's pretty wild.

[Suijin @ Aug 19th 2008 1:47PM]

Good thing it was just a video. I had the impression watching it that the thing was going to jump out of the screen and start chewing on my brain.

Definitely creepy.

[Jeff @ Aug 19th 2008 1:58PM]

looke like they *might* be on the upward slope of the uncanny valley, but CERTAINLY not out of it.

sheesh, still creepy.

[kal326 @ Aug 19th 2008 11:06PM]

@Kyle
Specular out of the video looked the creepiest, slap some steel armor on and it looks like one of the characters out of Doom3. On a side note the original picture looked like a girl I went to high school with. Maybe she was a robot, maybe had a tin.....nevermind

[caleb @ Aug 21st 2008 4:39PM]

Those who think the video are realistic make me fear the day we're invaded by similarly realistic robots and no body believes me when I tell them they're not real and they think I'm just having paranoid delusions.

Assholes.

[John @ Aug 19th 2008 10:32AM]

creepy.

[phanbouy @ Aug 19th 2008 3:15PM]

yeah, doesn't look like Molly Ringwald's aged well

[yode @ Aug 19th 2008 10:32AM]

holy shit that wireframe face scared the shit out of me

[kenadams111 @ Aug 19th 2008 10:37AM]

see the whole video here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bLiX5d3rC6o

[Boo Radley @ Aug 19th 2008 10:42AM]

Didn't AMD use these very same videos to demo the newest radeon tech just last week? Why would their CTO say that this wouldn't happen til 2020 if they are using this in their demos?

[thatrotierkid @ Aug 19th 2008 10:57AM]

i am not sure about what they used for the demo, but the article states that AMD said the 4870 x2 can handle the graphics power needed to run this. what AMD said was that we would see the lines of reality and CGI blur (this isnt blurring yet, just very good animation) until 2020

[kinshadow @ Aug 19th 2008 11:01AM]

This is emerging tech and requires a very large setup to capture the actor. The 2020 date was in reference to completely blurring the line. I'm sure we'll see it get fuzzier before then. He's probably talking about making the setup more accessible and the tech more pervasive. A couple of quick videos of a static actor sitting in a giant bubble are a lot easier than a full movie (or game, news clip, etc.) .

[Adam @ Aug 19th 2008 12:08PM]

Maybe he's thinking about something like real-time ray-tracing? I could see that being completely usable by what will be considered "normal" PC's by 2020.

[sntXrrr @ Aug 19th 2008 1:45PM]

@adam: you mean like in Doom 3 a few years ago?

[paul34 @ Aug 19th 2008 10:45AM]

I can't tell you how much terror-for-an-instant moment I had when the engadget.com refreshed and I saw that. Jesus.

[Saad Rabia @ Aug 19th 2008 10:45AM]

Hello there sexy.

[getStringFromObj() @ Aug 19th 2008 10:47AM]

I guess if they start with a spooky looking model, the end result looks more realistic.

[Bakesale @ Aug 19th 2008 10:49AM]

I for one welcome our creepy looking animated overlords. Wait. Never mind.

[Gizmo @ Aug 19th 2008 10:52AM]

There goes video evidence in court. Hello to movies with dead film stars.

Imagine being able to watch a movie with interchangeable film stars just a mouse click away.

[bstear @ Aug 19th 2008 11:36AM]

I've always thought Casablanca could use a little Pauly Shore.....

[Jason @ Aug 19th 2008 12:07PM]

How do you license your face?

[thatrotierkid @ Aug 19th 2008 12:30PM]

at first i thought you were making a lame "your face" come back, then i realized you were actually making a legitimate point

[SuperDre @ Aug 19th 2008 10:52AM]

OMG, looking at the animation/video I must say that Raja Koduri is wrong, it won't be by 2020, it will be by 2010 as this thing is already so incredibly real-looking.. If it wasn't mentioned that it was computergenerated than I would have believed it to be a real person..
Hmmm... now reading some more about this 'animation', it seems only the face itself is computergenerated, not the rest, so it's a computergenerated face rendered on top of a normal video.. that makes it less convincing, as the face isn't the thing that made the whole thing convincing, it was also the rest (hair, body/hand gestures, etc)..

[nikster @ Aug 19th 2008 9:21PM]

It's amazing from a technical standpoint.

But it's still pretty deep in creepy valley. Even on a grainy YouTube video, you can clearly see that there is no life in her, that she is absolutely devoid of joy. There is not a single smile from her. If I didn't know that she is animated and didn't look out for the signs, I'd say she's really depressed.

2020? That's silly. No one can predict what sort of tech is going to be relevant in 2020. What if I said "No, it's going to be 2030!". Pointless mind-farting.

[Sachin @ Aug 19th 2008 10:53AM]

Did you guys watch the video? That is seriously amazing. 2020, my ass.

[TareX @ Aug 19th 2008 10:53AM]

Amazing. I wouldn't have known if they hadn't told me.

[omoks @ Aug 19th 2008 10:58AM]

Wow!! Watch the Hi-quality youtube video. This is amazing stuff.

[Boo Radley @ Aug 19th 2008 10:59AM]

Keep in mind though, you are watching a 3D rendered recreation of an actual person. It's shot with dozens of cameras and then recreated in a virtual environment. That girl is real and said all those things and made all of those movements. It's not so much animation as performance capture.

[omoks @ Aug 19th 2008 11:05AM]

Dude! You need to watch and listen. The whole idea of the technology is that the face is being rendered by 1 cam and proprietery software. Thats why it s so cool. The only part animated is her face. The video and the engadget blog clearly states its her face. until 1:30 on the video that when you see her real face.

[chris1906 @ Aug 19th 2008 11:11AM]

if you watch the youtube video you will actually find that this tech does not use dozens of cameras like motion capture but process previously captured video with a computer.

[Mr Maze @ Aug 19th 2008 12:06PM]

Yes, it is still performance capture. And compositing an animated face with the original actor's body does not make it look good. Not impressed...

[Andy Engelkemier @ Aug 19th 2008 11:09AM]

The biggest problem here is the same as they have had in the past. Of course you can match facial targets to the exact same face. I mean, that's a challenge, but it can be done. But as soon as you put those targets on something with a different shaped face it looks Terrible. I was still feeling uncomfortable watching this one. For one, she over exaggerates most of what she is saying, so it doesn't look like a regular person at all. Maybe fine for someone like Jim Carey or any other overly animated comedian, but terrible for anything with drama. What I saw there weren't Subtle movements at all.

I think the 2020 is more correct than you think. If they are writing software to help most of this out, it'll take a while. If someone was going to hand tweak the animation's subtlties, then maybe 2010. I think the guy is right on when he's saying another 12 years and we might be where we want.

A good example of the strangeness would actually be reanimating familiar, but dead, actors. Imagine what they would look like with someone else's facial mannerisms. It's creepy as hell. It's worse when we know what they should look like, but it still feel awkward when we are looking at an animated character we don't know when it is trying to be realistic.

[Mark @ Aug 19th 2008 11:11AM]

The porn industry will use this to make sex tapes of celebrities. Then Hollywood will use it to animate a dog's face.

[Decoy @ Aug 19th 2008 4:01PM]

And someone will do both.

[tadghostal @ Aug 19th 2008 11:15AM]

FINALLY, someone has quit trying to save processing time (by rendering one side of the face as a mirror image of the other side) and made something asymetrical, aka realistic.

The biggest "creepy" factor when dealing with the uncanny valley is that we subconsciously recognize symmetrical faces as "not real". Living bodies are NOT symmetrical. You can see a good example by having someone familiar to you stand next to you while you both face a mirror. Look at each other in the mirror and you'll each notice that something's "just not right" about the other person - because you're seeing a mirror image of what you normally see when you look at them, and since we're not symmetrical, the mirror image looks "messed up".

The whole concept of rendering one side of a face then mirroring it (thus making symmetrical animated faces) is a holdover from when computing power was at a much higher premium than it is today.

Bottom line, render the whole face - including each side's inconsistency, and the uncanny valley disappears.

I've know this for quite some time, but I don't have the resources to prove it (. Oh well, pitiful me.

Bring on the realistic PR0N to cheer me up!

[Eric @ Aug 19th 2008 11:33AM]

OMG that is awesome! I am well aware that she is not real, yet I still want to see her naked :-)

[Hguh @ Aug 20th 2008 10:47PM]

LOL they'd prolly make one boob noticeably lower and bigger than the other just to make it look realistic and screw the hottness factor

[tiuk @ Aug 19th 2008 11:40AM]

Thanks, Engadget. There's nothing quite like firing up your RSS reader and being terrified to your very soul.

[zeromecha @ Aug 19th 2008 11:47AM]

I agree they have come a long way. But needing real actors to first make the emotion isn't coming very far at all. It's just good imitation at that point. Her movements were not as fluid as one would expect from a real person and her eyes didn't behave naturally.

[Frankie @ Aug 19th 2008 2:44PM]

THE ENTIRE CONCEPT IS STUPID ALL TOGETHER!

Why on earth would you use a real actor, to make an animated version of them, look as much like them as possible. What's the difference between that and actually filming the real actors? Am I lost here? Because this makes no sense to me.