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Realistic Human Graphics Look Creepy
WellHungMonkey writes "A really interesting read on Slate about how realistic human faces in games and on robots and so on, are not necessarily the way to go -- the brain isn't fooled, it attaches itself easier to Snoopy-like simplicity... Or Lara Croft attributes, but I'm not sure that's the brain talking."
I remember watching a 'making of' show about the first Shrek movie and they said they purposely made the girl less human-like for the same reason. That she got to a point were it was freaky to have her look that human.
I'm not drunk, I just have a speech impediment. And a stomach virus. And an inner ear infection.
I had a picture of Aki in a bikini from the Final Fantasy movie on my computer. My girlfriend found it and wanted to know why I had it. She didn't beleive me that it wasn't a real person.
In case (like me) you feel the need to find this picture, I think the one the parent poster is talking about is here
Finkployd
South Park is animated by scanning cardboard cutouts into a computer and manipulating them there. Thing is, the cutouts that get scanned ARE life size. 4 to 6 feet tall. It's probably easier to put small details in that way.
:)
I believe the first episode of South Park was made by filming actual peices of paper in front of a camera. If you look closely, you can see the shadow underneath where the edge of the paper curls up. I'm not sure at what point they switched over to computer animation. Either it happened fairly quickly, or Matt and Trey figured out that they can get rid of the shadows by putting a sheet of glass over the scene.
Technoli
Negative, the body model of Aki was built by this gentleman, and the head was modeled by this one.
My patience is infinite, my time is not.
Helicopter gunships, artillery, cruise missiles, and aerial bombardments that can take you out miles away. Generally, if you see the enemy, it had better be through a gun sight, because if not you are already in his.
Movies show close-in combat because it looks exciting and fills the field of view. Real combat is fought from in between cover, or at night.
"Learning is not compulsory... neither is survival."
--Dr.W.Edwards Deming
The animators didn't have a good grasp on (and probably didn't have the technology to model) realistic facial movements. They didn't convey a great deal of emotion.
IAADA (I am a digital animator), and I'd like to point out that you're batting 0.500 in regards to this snippet. While it's true that the facial animation and a sizeable portion of the body language in the final product (no pun intended) both fell short of accurately conveying human-like emotional dynamics, declaring that the animators didn't know part of their craft (referring only to facial animation/body language), greatly oversimplifies the issue; what it mostly boils down to is Time.
Firstly, the entire FF:TSW staff was comprised of some of the best in the business, bar none. Without getting too technical, the modeling techniques available to the modeling staff at the time of production could've indeed sufficed. In regards to complex organic surface modeling, I'm referring to NURBS ("Non-Uniform Rational B-Splines" - a type of curve) Patch Modeling: simply put, a technique involving only curves, where a modeler produces "patches" of any size one-by-one, and then "stitches" them together. Think of it roughly as tailoring a dress made only out of patches and with no visible seams, with as many patches as you'd like. The result: any desired surface, composed of any number of individual regions, each one able to infinitely deform itself while able to affect other nearby patches accordingly. However, patch modeling is painstakingly time-intensive, increasing nigh-exponentially when the amount of patches comprising a surface is increased. This in turn affects the animators' control, giving them near-infinite possibilities for motion, but also increasing the workload tremendously.
IIRC, the characters in FF:TSW were in fact modeled using NURBS patches, but as I mentionned before, the number of patches used could've been two, five, or even tenfold, had the staff been given that much time to work on them. For example, compare the facial animation and body language in FF:TSW to the animation in The Animatrix's "Final Flight Of The Osiris", which was largely produced by the same team. If I may indulge, note the sly glance that the female lead throws to her male counterpart, when they find themselves on the Osiris' bridge just after their sword fight. That quarter-second of motion is nothing short of stunning, as was the rest! Why? Consider the running time of this short film compared to the full-length FF:TSW. Granted, the production schedule was shorter yet not proportional, while the modeling and animation technologies changed very little (granted, this is up for debate).
So there you have it! If anything, the fact that the picture was already 2 years overdue when released leads me to place the blame for the "... [lack of] light in their eyes, or any of the other subtle facial clues we look for when talking to someone" largely on the producers trying to bite off more than they could chew. I'm certain that everyone on the team could pick up a share of the blame, but IMHO the entire endeavour was a laudable effort nonetheless, which greatly upped the bar in terms of achieving life-like digital animation. Cheers!