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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 :-)"
So John Carmack are you listening? Any chance this can be included in DOOM3?
No, but you should see the urine stream they've mastered for Duke Nukem Forever. WOW!
So John Carmack are you listening? Any chance this can be included in DOOM3?
Sure, add it all in! That way when DOOM3 is finally released it will only be available bundled with a new Cray X1.
Trolling is a art,
Imagine the effect on the porn industry.
Douglas P. Price
Henrik Wann Jensen also got a technical Oscar earlier this year. This work is actually quite old. See the original Siggraph 2001 paper here.
Don't Panic
Anyone's who's stuck a flashlight in their mouth could have told you that skin doesn't just reflect light...
+1 Insightful, -1 Troll. What can I say, I'm an Insightful Troll.
Do you have any idea how many infants had to be skinned to get that shader just right?
Just in case anyone's wondering what that magical technique is: It's called subsurface scattering and simulates the light flow within materials, not just on the surface.
How is this any different than sub-surface scattering? I know there are a few lightwave plugins out there that can do this. Something I googled
Quid festinatio swallonis est aetherfuga inonusti?
Africus aut Europaeus?
"What isn't going to be included in DOOM3?"
A real release date.
Not if the engineers are living in India.
I'm sorry but anyone who thinks Gollum has perfect skin needs a date with a jar of Oil of Olay.
Oops... links from ATI site MUCH faster:
s s-Demo-v1.0.mov
e -Demo-v1.0.mov
http://www2.ati.com/misc/demos/ATI-X800-DoubleCro
http://www2.ati.com/misc/demos/ATI-X800-Subsurfac
-Christopher Wu
http://www.christopherwu.net/
..as I will already know what Sex my robot is!
Wow, the kiddies will be able to download Pre set Studio Max, or lightwave files with finnished wireframe movies and then all the have to do is hit RENDER. It's like the EasyBake oven for porn!
Sign me up for the next distributed computing craze: pr0n@home!
Actually, depending on how long it takes to crank out a flick, it might be cheaper to pay the engineers. Remember, girls are getting paid anywhere from $200-$3000 PER SCENE, maybe 2-3 scenes per day. Add in pay for the guys, cameraman, location rental, etc. (all of which could be pennies based on the current "gonzo" porno trend), and you are talking upwards of 5-10 grand a day. 4 engineers @ $30/hour * 8 hours = $960 / day. Even if it took them a week you might still be saving money.
Green-voting, republican-registered, socialist-libertarian.
...then this article would be entitled "Perfect Dugutal Skun"
Member of Orkut? Annoyed with spam?
The most ridiculous part to me of lens-flare is that originally, it was to be avoided at all costs since it interfered with the suspension of disbelief (ie. it reminds the viewer that they're viewing something seen by a camera, not them), but somehow it got absorbed into the grammar of cinema as being cool. Videogames, not actually using a lens in the rendering process, were immune to the effect, but labored hard in efforts to reproduce it.
Not A Sig
This is also mentioned in his book, (2001), which I highly recommend to anyone interested in raytracing. It's short and about as easy to understand as photon mapping could possibly be.
He has a lot of stuff on his webpage, too, including videos of computer-generated smoke, light through translucent materials, and a good global illumination demo.
For a simpler explaination of what this is all about, there's a photon mapping entry at wikipedia.
-jim
He also hopes that in the future it will be more widely used in architectural design and art restoration to make virtual buildings leap out of the computer screen.
Writer: Did you read that computer graphics piece?
Editor: Hrmph.
Writer: Is it going in?
Editor: Does it mention things leaping out of the computer screen?
Writer: No, it's about a rendering technique.
Editor: The style book says, and I quote, "All stories refering to 3D computer graphics must include the phrase 'leaping out of the screen'"
Writer: I guess I could tack it on at the end. It really wouldn't make sense though.
Editor: No one will notice.
When you see '1777' and start drooling because of open access permissions :P
When this tech finally gets into the handicam budget used by the porn industry, we'll probably know it by the fact that the guy's dick is 14 feet long and rock hard and the girl's bust is a 44 quintuple Q. This is what is known in the porn industry as "creativity."
No he didn't make Gollum. Jensen was the main researcher of this new subsurface scattering technique when he was at Stanford (he is now in San Diego). As was mentioned earlier this was published in a SIGGRAPH 2001 paper, so at least the research might date as far back as early 2001, late 2000. Jensen along with Steve Marschner and Pat Hanrahan got a SciTech Academy Award earlier this year for it (though Marc Levoy was omitted).
The original implementation used raytrcing to achieve the effect, to slow for actual production work. Some people from ILM spotted the paper and decided to implement in a way more friendly to production. Originally it was going to be used for Ep. 2, but the research wasn't completed on time. The first time it was applied was for Dobby in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. Christophe Hery even presented a Stupid RenderMan Trick using shadow buffers that could be applied to SSS. Around that time Ken McGaugh and Joe Letteri left ILM (tough they were involved with this research at ILM) and joined Weta Digital to work on the Two Towers. Consecuently, Hery, McGaugh and Letteri also received a SciTech Academy award this year for finding a way to implement Jensen's SSS in a production environment.
Subsurface scattering is quite old - I learned about it in my graphics classes, and I've been out of school since 1996... here's a 1993 paper on it.
He points out on his web page "Photon mapping is quite good at simulating subsurface scattering, but it becomes costly for highly scattering materials such as milk and skin. For these materials it is better to use a diffusion approximation. The diffusion approximation is much faster than tracing individual photons, and it is simple enough that a BSSRDF can be formulated."
Here's a BSSRDF from a google search.
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
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
because, at some point, somebody is going to make a 1st-person-shooter with absolutely realistic looking victims.
How long until it goes from subdermal photon scattering to absolutely realistic effects (of gibs flying off a body in the process of becoming a corpse.)
We'll be able to make shots from a bullet's point of view as it pierces and rends.
Will this enure us to the real thing?
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