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Virtual Stuntmen Ready for Hollywood
Kerhop writes "Discovery Channel has an article about a new form of virtual actors in movies. In particular "Endorphin's virtual actors learn how to move and react independently, unlike most computerized characters now that depend on fixed databases containing animated clips". MSNBC also is featuring a news video (no direct link is available, stream must to be added to playlist). The featured software Endorphin is created by Natural Motion."
Now we get to hear the people in Hollywood complain about having their jobs outsourced to computers.
Dated: June 26, 2003
and from the article "...will make their debut next year in the film "Troy,"..."
Frist psot?
^_^
I started reading the Discovery Channel article and saw they'd make their debut "next year in the film 'Troy.'" And I thought, hey, they just made a movie about Troy, they're going to make another one? Then I saw the June 26, 2003 date of the article. Slow news day I guess.
"This? I can make a hat, I can make a brooch, I can make a pterodactyl..."
...to reproduce the robotic movements of the virtual Stallone and Bronson.
Forget movies...this would/could revolutionize gaming. Could you imagine actual thinking/reacting NPC characters that are not just set to a script. And if literally you can get fluid muscle movements... the graphics could be amazing. Okay, I'm done fantasizing. Regardless of how many times I see new "Revolutionary" technology it never seizes to amaze me.
June 26, 2003
The world's first virtual stuntmen, born out of an Oxford University zoologist's research into human motion, will make their debut next year in the film "Troy," according to a press release issued this week by the university.
I thought this site was supposed to be News for nerds. This story is over a year old.
Let's play video games with mailmanZERO
There are advantages to doing your own stunts. At least today the virtual actors are shown only from a distance, since facial features still don't quite look real enough (though even before Troy there were some lovely examples in Lord of the Rings. Those were keyframed rather than virtual actors.)
Being able to focus up-close on an actor doing a stunt gives a verisimilitude that the audience really appreciates; they believe that the character is in danger. But they can also detect the jump-cuts that usually surround a stunt (since a stunt is shot on its own, with lots of preparation beforehand, and the camera is immediately stopped so that everybody can be checked out.)
So when they're ready to seamlessly slip a virtual actor into the frame, then back to the human actor at the end, and make it look like a single shot, you'll really be thrilled. You will believe Brad Pitt can kick ass. (I once played Achilles myself and I loved Brad Pitt's work.)
... he'll come on at the start of every movie, and tell the kids to quit downloading his code!
Did Buzz Lightyear do his own stunts, or did he have a stunt double?
Live forever, or die trying.
can be found here
Apple is rumored to be developing a portable MP3 player that has a hard drive, leaked sorces say it's name will be the 'I-Pod'
Outsourced actors......well, the next logical step would be to somehow figure out a way to force them to belong to the screen actors guild (union), before the are allowed to "act"
What relation does this technology have to the Weta Digital's Massive program, which was used to create the characters for the war scenes in the Lord of the Rings movies? That program used sub-elements called Agents which could be tailored to give you certain randomated AI actions for characters. (Check the LOTR DVDs or google for Weta Massive for more info... I don't want to slashdot anyone in particular ;-) )
Wow... imagine a whole bunch of these taught to do Beowulf...
There are two main approaches to this - the "animation splicing" systems, where canned bits of motion are spliced together by a program, and the "behavior" systems, where control programs are trying to optimize some goal. The first major appearance of a good "splicing" system was the baby 'zillas in Godzilla 2000. That's what most feature films are using today.
Kinematic motion generation has been around for years, and that's what you see in games. It doesn't look real, but it works well enough for gameplay. The physics isn't realistic. That's why, from across the room, EA Football looks different from NFL football. Those jerky motions really pop out at you, especially when they're alternated with nice motion-captured moves.
Endorphin isn't as automated as it looks; much manual tweaking of the motion is necessary. Motion Factory has more automation, but it's kinematic. Automatic physically-realistic animation is hard, because you have to solve the robotic control problem. The animation community may yet do this. But they're not there yet.
(I've done some work on this.)
Isn't it people who download movies that put people like stuntmen out of jobs?
...virtual Darwin Award.
Table-ized A.I.
The article may be old news, but fully reactive software stunt men have been around since 2002. I did hours of "research" on this topic with some really good software.
Clearly the next step is to make the audience virtual. You send your movie-watching robot to watch the movie for you, and it e-mails you a "thumbs-up" or "thumbs-down", freeing you to read a book or take a walk. Perhaps this is progress after all.
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