Slashdot Mirror
Perfect Digital Skin
ILMfan writes "BBC Technology is describing a new graphics algorithm for creating perfect virtual skin. This technique by graphics wizard Henrik Jensen (the guy who invented photon mapping) is already being used in movies (it was used on Gollum in Lord of the Rings, and it will be used in the soon-to-be-released van Helsing movie). And perhaps more exciting is that several game companies are planning on using it for their next generation games. So John Carmack are you listening? Any chance this can be included in DOOM3? Of course there are endless other opportunities for virtual humans with perfect skin :-)"
Imagine the effect on the porn industry.
Douglas P. Price
A couple of posts, as well as the original post allude to the potential use of this technology to the pornography industry. While I realize that it is a multibillion dollar industry, and could certainly afford to utilize high end CG, I wonder how the cost-benifit ratio would work out. After all, paying engineers is obviosly more costly than paying hores.
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Any chance this can be included in DOOM3?
You're absolutely right - expectations of today's games are getting completely insane.
Didja see the new lens-flare algorithms? They're 16% more realistic than anything ever seen before. (Requirements: Dual P4, 300 gigs available on HD, 2 gigs RAM, etc...)
Whoop-de-doo. Good games don't need stuff like this, and that's something that I'm afraid the game industry is losing sight of. As games get more expensive and cost-intensive to produce, are we headed for another video game industry crash like in the early 80s? The answer, of course, is a definite maybe.
Is there a reason nobody is mentioning that he shared the Oscar with Stephen R. Marschner and Pat Hanrahan?
Lasers Controlled Games!
I honestly don't really think I want to play games where you can't tell the characters from the ones in real life. I'm currently playing through Call of Duty again and if all of the soldiers I killed looked exactly like real people dying I don't think I could actually do it. There is something to be said for being able to experience things more realistically, but I just don't think it would be fun anymore. The reason why games don't lead to violence in real life imho is because its easy to clearly differentiate between life and a video game. Well what happens in 5 years when you literally cannot tell the difference between the two?
As a gamer for over 20 years now I've always enjoyed seeing the graphics get better and better but I wonder if it will someday go too far and make games less enjoyable?
If you wanna get rich, you know that payback is a bitch
Not to be pedantic, but subsurface scattering is the physical phenomenon. Just because he found a fast approximation for it doesn't mean that it's a different technique.
Derek
Don't Panic...
It's funny how the phrase "perfect skin" means exact opposites depending on if you are talking about real human beings or digital virtual human beings.
I mean on a real person "perfect skin" means no imperfections, on a digital person "perfect skin" means skin with blemishes and realistic imperfections.
I dunno... just saying is all...
- For the complete works of Shakespeare: cat
Come on... A lot of feelings of inadequacy are due to the traditional media brianwash and advertisement. If you are 5lb+, you are over weight, if you are 5lb-, you are underweight. If you are dark skinned, you need to "revitalize", it you are fair skinned, you need to "get deep texture". Even things like news (especially the war coverage) are very polished, glamorized and very unreal.
:)
Things have gone down the drain quite long ago before the "internet craze took off".
I believe many people know the difference between real world and virtual world (internet, tv, movies, stories, etc.) Some that don't know the difference do not need any special technology to get a glossy image of the world -- existing technology does it already
S