News
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September 19, 2008
Image Metrics’ "Emily" Ushers in a New Era for Animation
Image Metrics' "Emily" will set a new precedent for photo-realistic characters in video games and films. The company is hoping their approach will finally allow animations to look more like humans and less like "corpses."
A long standing barrier known as "uncanny valley" refers to the perception that animation looks less realistic as it approaches human likeness. Image Metrics' new modeling technology hopes to change that, by enabling minute details of a facial expression to be captured and created.
Previous methods for animating faces involved putting dots on a face and observing the way the dots move, but Image Metrics analyzes facial movements at the level of individual pixels in a video so subtle variations can be tracked.
Researchers began with a video of an employee talking. They then broke down the facial movements into dozens of smaller movements, each of which was given a "control system." The team then recreated the gestures, movement by movement, in a model.
However, while creations such as "Emily" allow a much greater number of computations per second, the line between what is real and what is rendered will not be blurred completely until 2020.
Click here to find out more about how "Emily" was created.
Source: Times Online / Technology
